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BROWNING, ROBERT. Lyrical and Dra- 
matic Poems. Selected from the works of Robert 
.^Browning. With an extract from Stedman's 
"Victorian Poets." Edited by Edward T. Mason. 
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1883. i2mo., 
pp. xviii, 275. 

LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC POEMS. Se- 
lected from the works of Robert Browning. With 
an extract from Stedman's " Victorian Poets." 
Edited by Edward T. Mason. New York: Henry 
Holt & Co., 1883. i2mo, pp. xviii, 275. 

POETRY. Lyrical and Dramatic Poems. Se- 
lected from the works of Robert Browning. With 
an extract from Stedman's " Victorian Poets." 
Edited by Edward T. Mason. New York : Henry 
Holt & Co., 1883. i2mo, pp. xviii, 275. 



LYRICAL AND 
DRAMATIC POEMS 

SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF 



ROBERT BROWNING 



with an extract from stedman's ''victorian 
poets:' 



EDITED BY 

EDWARD T. MASON 




. ( i^^' 2S-1B80 



NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1883 



1^-^^ 



Copyright, 1883, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 

U. CdPY 

SU^PUE» FROM 

COfYHIQHT FILES 

JANUARY, 1911. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface .......... v 

An Extract from E. C. Stedman's "Victorian 

Poets" i 

Cavalier Tunes:— Marching Along: Give a Rouse: 

Boot and Saddle 78 

" How they Brought the Good News from Ghent 

TO Aix " 83 

Muleykeh 88 

Incident of the French Camp 100 

Herve Riel 103 

h albert and hob 112 

Martin Relph 119 

The Lost Leader 135 

The Pied Piper of Hamelin 137 

Holy-Cross Day 153 

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister . . . .161 

The Laboratory 165 

A Forgiveness 169 



Contents. 

PAGE 

Meeting AT Night, — Parting at Morning . . 190 

The Italian in England 192 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City .... 200 

The Englishman in Italy 207 

Home-Thoughts from Abroad 221 

The Guardian An gkl 223 

Song 227 

Evelyn Hope 228 

AbtVogler 232 

Saul , . . 242 

Prospice 274 



PREFACE 



The object of this book is to excite a wider 
interest in the works of Robert Browning. Its 
contents have been selected with special reference 
to the large number of readers who can enjoy those 
portions of his poetry which are clear and melodious, 
and do not enjoy those which tax the ingenuity and 
fail to please the ear. 

The fame of this poet is world-wide. He has 
inspired enthusiastic devotion in minds of the 
highest order ; yet he is little read. Why is this ? 
The fault is in the poet : not in the public. Let us 
first take a fair view of the ugly side of this subject. 
It must be confessed that Browning often fails to 
make himself understood, and that, where his mean- 



VI. Preface, 

ing is plain, it is often expressed in harsh and 
jagged lines. One cause of his obscurity is his 
fondness for out-of-the-way themes, which he treats 
with entire indifference to the fact that they are 
not so familiar to his readers as to himself ; another 
cause is the peculiarity of his style ; his habit of 
contraction, and his use of idiomatic forms hitherto 
unknown to the English language. His devotees 
have excused — even justified and commended — his 
obscurity, and their loyalty has sometimes betrayed 
them into utterances which come dangerously near 
being nonsense. It has been said that he cares so 
much for the spirit of his work, that he is quite 
regardless of its form ; that he has such reverence 
for his thought that he chooses to present it in its 
naked simplicity. The essential fallacy of such 
criticism is, that it ignores the fact that poetry is 
always dependent upon form, that the excellence of 
verse depends upon perfection of structure. It is 
needless to enlarge upon so elementary a principle 
of the poetic art. Mr. Nettleship, in the course of 
an essay upon So?-dello, published in 1868, says : — 



Preface. vii. 

" It seems to me that we may find good reasons for 
the existence of these defects, so-called. He evi- 
dently considers that his first duty as a poet is to give 
us direct from the fountain-head, either his percep- 
tions, so far as they can be expressed in language, 
or his thoughts : that his toil should be spent in 
digging out straight from its hiding-place the pure 
unalloyed perception or thought for men to see. 
Thus his argument would be, either that so long as. 
the true worth of the metal is seen, any labor spent 
in improving or making smooth its actual visible 
shape is a waste of power, or that such labor if 
bestowed has only the effect of lessening the bulk 
and tarnishing the brilliancy of the untouched con- 
ception. " In view of the facts of the case, ordinary, 
uninspired common sense revolts against this. What 
if the mass quarried out comes " in such a ques- 
tionable shape" — is so chaotic and mysterious, 
that men not only doubt if it be gold, but cannot 
even decide whether it be mineral, animal, or veget- 
able ? Fitz Hugh Ludlow, one of the most genial 
and acute of critics, one, too, who loved to "pluck 



viii. Preface. 

out the heart of a mystery, " himself a warm ad- 
mirer of Browning — once said of this same Sordello, 
— " He might as well have shuffled the words to- 
gether in a hat, and tumbled them out, pell mell, 
upon the table. " There is an old story, in the 
same connection, which is so good and suggestive 
that it will bear re-telling. Douglas Jerrold, was 
recovering from a severe illness ; while he was still 
confined to his bed, SordellOy then newly published, 
was brought to him. In a few moments he called 
eagerly to his wife, who came from an adjoining 
room, and found the invalid sitting upright in bed, 
with an expression of grave anxiety and apprehen- 
sion upon his face. " Take this ! read that page !" 
She obeyed, Jerrold watching her the while with 
intense earnestness. "Well? well?" he exclaimed, 
when she looked up from the volume, " Do you 
understand it? — Does it convey any idea to your 
mind? " "No, indeed ! Not the slightest ! " "Thank 
God ! " said Jerrold, sinking back upon his pillow, 
" Thank God ! I thought I had lost my reasoning 
powers ! " 



Preface. ix. 

Present to any chance company of twenty fairly 
well educated people, such lines as these : — 

"O call him not culorit, this Pontiff ! 
Be hard on this Kaiser ye won't if 
Ye take into con-si-de ration 
What dangers attend elevation ! " — 

or these : — 

"They turned on him. Dumb menace in that mouth, 
Malice in that unstridulosity ! 
He cannot but intend some stroke of state 
Shall signalize his passage into peace 
Out of the creaking ; hinder transference 
O' the Hohenstielers - Schwanganese to King, 
Pope, autocrat, or sf~>cialist republic ! That's 
Exact the cause his lips unlocked would cry." 

— Can there be any doubt what the general verdict 
would be ? If poetry is indeed an art, and if the 
office of that art is to present worthy themes in an 
especially clear and attractive manner — how shall 
we find excuse for such work as this ? 

The reader may think that all this is foreign to 
my purpose, and it does seem an odd way to recom- 
mend an author ; yet, uncourteous and uncalled- 



X. Preface. 

for as these observations may appear, in the present 
instance there are good reasons for them. Pro- 
foundly impressed by the greatness of Browning's 
genius, recognizing his rare qualities, believing him 
to be in some respects the greatest poet of his age — 
I am yet convinced that no attempt to show his 
claims to popular regard can be consistent or suc- 
cessful, which does not proceed upon a frank ad- 
mission of his many and glaring faults. Some of 
his admirers have labored to prove him great in 
virtue of his defects ; may it not be wiser to show 
that he is great in spite of those defects ? Let us 
try to see, then, why it is that this poet, from whom 
the majority of intelligent readers turn away, des- 
pairing, if not disgusted, is hailed as master by 
some singers of well assured fame, and is applauded 
by critics whose judgment commands respect. 

He is a master of the technicalities of his art, and 
is endowed with a genuine gift of song. Few poets 
have held so easy and so assured a mastery over 
many and widely varied rhythmical forms. The 
prevailing tendency of his verse is toward vigor 



Preface, xi. 

rather than beauty ; yet he has written lines which 
place him in the foremost rank of rhytliniical melo- 
dists ; lines filled with the spirit of music, gracious, 
serenely beautiful, challenging comparison with the 
verse of Spenser or of Keats : — 

* * And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one 

after one, 
So docile they come to the pen door, till folding be done. 
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for ]o, they have fed 
"Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed ; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 
Into eve and the blue far above us — so blue and so far ! " — 

Lines such as these will linger in the memory for 
many a year ! Some of his poems are lyrical in the 
strictest sense, suggesting, claiming the accompani- 
ment of song — and well fitted to be sung. For in- 
stance, nothing could be better in their way than 
the Cavalier Tuties, especially the first, Marching 
Along. This is a true song. Silks rustle, plumes 
wave, swords flash, as the gallants start from their 
carouse ; we hear the rollicking voices of the mad- 
cap band as they lustily troll out their defiant battle- 
song, and we would fain join in the ringing chorus. 



xii. Preface. 

lie is eminently successful in narrative poetry, 
and knows thoroughly well how to tell a story, be it 
grave or gay. He can seize the essential features of 
a great action or a strange experience, and, with a 
few bold strokes, present a picture all aglow with 
color and instinct with life, leaving on the mind an 
impression bright as a diamond. Who can ever 
forget the wild gallop from Ghent to Aix, or that 
heroic boy who fell dead at Napoleon's feet — the 
smile upon his lips ? On the other hand, he can 
take some odd legend, like that of the Pied Pipcr^ 
and sustain our interest in it through page after 
page ; wandering on from sheer love of story- 
telling, adding fresh incidents, inventing new sur- 
prises, weaving in quaint details, while we follow him 
as eagerly as ever the children of Hamelin ran after 
the fascinating piper. Humor forms a prominent 
element in his work ; and the quality of his humor 
is very remarkable, both for its strength and variety ; 
his range extends from easy pleasantry and 
good-natured banter, to giotesqueness as grim as 
Holbein's Dance of Death. 



Preface, xiii. 

He does not often give us descriptions of nature, 
but scattered throughout his works there are passa- 
ges which show that he is not insensible to nature's 
charm ; passages of simple and quiet loveliness, 
which sink deep into the heart, without bewildering 
the braiii. Such are to be found in Saul^ and in the 
pictures(iiiely descriptive EngHsh?nan in Italy ; but 
the finest example of his power to portray nature, is 
the exquisite lyric, Houie-thoiights from Abroad j 
here there is absolutely no suggestion of the " smell 
of the lamp " ; all is fresh and bright and sweet — 
the very breath of an English spring-time caught, 
and stored away for us in a book ! Having thus 
glanced at some aspects of his verse which invite 
comparison with the work of other men, we may 
consider the poet's peculiar and characteristic 
excellence. 

Human nature jsjhe^ theme and inspiration of the 
greater portion of Browning's poetr}-. Always a 
close observer and a keen analyst, in this field of 
study his observation becomes most close, his 
analysis most searching and subtle. Human nature 



xiv. Preface. 

attracts and absorbs him beyond all else, leading 
him to scan with eager eyes alike the past and the 
present, to mingle with men of every race and every 
station. Perhaps the difficulty of his task may 
suggest some explanation of his frequent obscurity. 
The primary object of his work is the portrayal of 
character ; he would show what men are, not what 
they do ; incident and action are valued by him only 
in so far as they illustrate the inner life. To this 
end he subordinates everything, all the fruits of his 
scholarship, all the resources of his art, and in the 
pursuit of this object he has achieved his highest 
success, and made for himself a unique place among 
the poets of the world. 

It is his highest praise, that while his chief 
study is humanity, the revelation of man's " heart 
of heart, " his song is cheerful and inspiring, de- 
claring hopes, not fears, certainties, not doubts ; 
passing by apparent failure in the present, to 
dwell upon final success. In an age of negation 
and querulous doubt, negation finds but little room 
in Browning's philosophy — pessimism, none. He 



Preface. xv. 

is a poet of active fciith, and, therefore, of 
strength and comfort. He utters no wail over the 
destiny of mankind. Though he clearly recognizes 
the existence of *' the heartache, and the thousand 
natural shocks that flesh is heir to ; " though he 
sees pain and sorrow with widely and deeply 
sympathetic vision, he is yet able to look forward 
toward the consummation of all things, with a 
serene assurance of ultimate triumph for the race. 
This spirit constantly manifests itself in his work ; 
it animates the dreamily tender sentiment of Evelyn 
Hope^ it may be traced more clearly in the passion- 
ate cry of Abt Vogler^ and it rises to still nobler 
heights in Prospice^ and in the rapt ecstasy of the 
shepherd-boy, the inspired bard and seer, who pro- 
claims deliverance to Saul. 

With two exceptions — Abt Vog/er 3.nd Saul — no 
poem in this volume can be for a moment regarded 
as obscure. The aim has been to show the poet at 
his best ; but the principle of selection has made it 
necessary to exclude many poems of rare*, beauty 
and excellence. No extracts have been made trom 



xvi. Preface. 

the longer poems, although they contain much that 
is clear and admirable ; such fragments can seldom 
produce a satisfactory impression, or do any justice 
to their author. Despite their occasional obscurity, 
it was found impossible to exclude Abt Vogler and 
Saul, for both of these poems are among the best 
illustrations of the optimism which is so important 
an element of Browning's genius ; and, among his 
shorter poems, Saul is, perhaps, the one which most 
conspicuously manifests that creative imagination, 
which is the highest faculty that a poet can possess. 
I am indebted to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 
for permission to make use of the ninth chapter of 
Mr. Stedman's Victorian Poets, which is here re- 
printed. This is an especially valuable introduction 
to the study of Browning ; being a comprehensive 
and judicial estimate of the poet's merits and de- 
merits, by a not unfriendly critic. 



ROBERT BROWNING.* 

In a study of Browning, the most original and 
unequal of living poets, three features obviously- 
present themselves. His dramatic gift, so rare in 
these times, calls for recognition and analysis ; his 
method — the eccentric quality of his expression — 
constantly intrudes upon the reader ; lastly, the 
moral of his verse warrants a closer examination 
than we give to the sentiments of a more conven- 
tional poet My own perception of the spirit which 
his poetry, despite his assumption of a purely 
dramatic purpose, has breathed from the outset, is 
one which I shall endeavor to convey in simple and 
direct terms. 

Various other examples have served to illustrate 
the phases of a poet's life, but Browning arouses 

* Reprinted from E. C. Stedman's Victorian Poets, by 
permission of ^^essrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 



2 Robert Bt'owning. 

discussion with respect to the elements of poetry as 
an art. Hitherto I have given some account of an 
author's career and writings before proffering a 
critical estimate of the latter. But this man's genius 
is so peculiar, and he has been so isolated in style 
and purpose, that I know not how to speak of his 
works without first seeking a key to their interpreta- 
tion, and hence must partially reverse the order 
hitherto pursued. 



It is customary to call Browning a dramatist, and 
without doubt he represents the dramatic element, 
such as it is, of the recent English school. He 
counts among his admirers many intellectual persons, 
some of whom pronounce him the greatest dramatic 
poet since Shakespeare, and one has said that " it is 
to him we must pay homage for whatever is good, 
and great, and profound, in the second period of the 
Poetic Drama of England." 

This may be true ; nevertheless, it also should be 
declared, with certain modifications, that Robert 



Robert Broivning. 3 

Browning, in the original sense of the term, is not a 
dramatic poet at all. 

Procter, in the preface to a collection of his own 
songs, remarks with precision and truth : " It is, 
in fact, this power of forgetting himself, and of 
imagining and fashioning characters different from 
his own, which constitutes the dramatic quality. A 
man who can set aside his own idiosyncrasy is half 
a dramatist." Although Browning's earlier poems 
were in the form of plays, and have a dramatic pur- 
pose, they are at the opposite remove, in spirit and 
method, from the models of the true histrionic era, 
— the work of Fletcher, Webster, and Shakespeare. 
They have the sacred lage and fire, but the flame is 
that of Browning, and not of the separate creations 
which he strives to inform. 

The early drama was the mouthpiece of a pas- 
sionate and adventurous era. The stage bore to the 
period the relations of the modern novel and news- 
paper to our own, not only holding the mirror up to 
nature, but showing the " very age and body of the 
time." It was a vital growth, sprung from the peo- 



4 Robert Browning, 

pie, and having a reflex action upon their imagina- 
tion and conduct. Even in Queen Anne's day the 
theatre was the meeting-place of wits, and, if the 
plays were meaner, it was because they copied the 
manners of an artificial world. But, in either case, 
the playwrights were in no more hazard of repre- 
senting their own natures, in one role after another, 
than are the leader-writers in their versatile articles 
upon topics of our day. They invented a score of 
characters, or took them from real life, grouped 
them with consummate effect, placed them in 
dramatic situations, lightened tragedy with mirth, 
mellowed comedy with pathos, and produced a 
healthful and objective dramatic literature. They 
looked outward, not inward : their imagination was 
the richer for it, and of a more varied kind. 

The stage still has its office, but one more sub- 
sidiary than of old. Our own age is no less stirring 
than was the true dramatic period, and is far more 
subtile in thought. But the poets fail to represent 
it objectively, and the drama does not act as a 
safety-valve for the escape of surplus passion and 



Robert Browning. ^ 

desire. That office the novelists have undertaken, 
while the press brings its dramas to every fireside. 
Yet the form of the play still seems to a poet the 
most comprehensive mould in which to cast a mas- 
terpiece. It is a combination of scenic and plastic 
art ; it includes monologue, dialogue, and song, — 
action and meditation, — man and woman, the lover, 
the soldier, and the thinker, — all vivified by the 
imagination, and each essential to the completeness 
of the whole. Everi to poets like Byron, who have 
no perception of natures differing from their own, 
it has a fascination as a vehicle of expression, and 
the result is seen in '' Sardanapalus " and " Cain." 
Hence the closet-drama ; and although praise- 
worthy efforts, as in '' Virginius " and '' Ion," have 
been made to revive the early method, these modern 
stage-plays often are unpoetical and tame. Most of 
what is excellent in our dramatic verse is to be 
found in plays that could not be successfully en- 
acted. 

While Browning's earlier poems are in the 
dramatic form, his own personality is manifest in 



6 Robert Browning. 

the speech and movement of almost every character 
of each piece. His spirit is infused, as if by 
metempsychosis, within them all, and forces each to 
assume a strange Pentecostal tone, which we dis- 
cover to be that of the poet himself. Bass, treble, 
or recitative, — whether in pleading, invective, or 
banter, — the voice still is there. But while his 
characters have a common manner and diction, we 
become so wonted to the latter that it seems like a 
new dialect which we have mastered for the sake of 
its literature. This feeling is acquired after some 
acquaintance with his poems, and not upon a first 
or casual reading of them. 

The brief, separate pieces, which he terms 
"dramatic lyrics," are just as properly dramas as 
are many of his five-act plays. Several of the latter 
were intended for stage-production. In these we 
feel that the author's special genius is hampered, so 
that the student of Browning deems them less rich 
and rare than his strictly characteristic essays. 
Even in the most conventional, this poet cannot 
refrain from the long monologues, stilted action. 



Robert Browning. 7 

and metaphysical discursion, which mark the closet- 
drama and unfit a composition for the stage. His 
chief success is in the portrayal of single characters 
and specific moods. 

I would not be understood to praise his originality 
at the expense of his greatness. His mission has been 
that of exploring those secret regions which gene- 
rate the forces whose outward phenomena it is for 
the playwrights to illustrate. He has opened a new 
field for the display of emotional power, — found- 
ing, so to speak, a sub-dramatic school of poetry 
whose office is to follow the workings of the mind, to 
discover the impalpable elements of which human 
motives and passions are composed. The greatest 
forces are the most elusive, the unseen mightier 
than the seen ; modern genius chooses to seek for 
the under-currents of the soul rather than to depict 
acts and situations. Browning, as the poet of pys- 
chology, escapes to that stronghold whither, as I 
have said, science and materialism are not yet pre- 
pared to follow him. How shall the chemist read 
the soul ? No former poet has so relied upon this 



8 Robert Browning. 

province for the excursions of his muse. True, he 
explores by night, stumbles, halts, has vague ideas 
of the topography, and often goes back upon his 
course. But, though others complete the unfinished 
work of Columbus, it is to him that we award the 
glory of discovery, — not to the engineers and colo- 
nists that succeed him, however firmly they plant 
themselves and correctly map out the now undis- 
puted land. 

II. 

Browning's manner is so eccentric as to challenge 
attention and greatly affect our estimate of him as 
a poet. Eccentricity is not a proof of genius, and 
even an artist should remember that originaHty con- 
sists not only in doing things differently, but also 
in " doing things better." The genius of Shakes- 
peare and Moliere enlarged and beautified their 
style; it did not distort it. Again, the grammarian's 
statement is true, that Poetry is a means of Expres- 
sion. A poet may differ from other men in having 
profounder emotions and clearer perceptions, but 



Robert Bro7vning. 9 

this is not for him to assume, nor a claim which 
they are swift to grant. The lines, 

" O many are the poets that are sown 
By Nature ! men endowed with highest gifts, 
The vision and the faculty divine ; 
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse," 

imply that the recognized poet is one who gives 
voice, in expressive language, to the common 
thought and feeling which lie deeper than ordinary 
speech. He is the interpreter : moreover, he is the 
maker, — an artist of the beautiful, the inventor of 
harmonious numbers which shall be a lure and a 
repose. 

A poet, however emotional or rich in thought, 
must not fail to express his conception and make 
his work attractive. Over-possession is worth less 
than a more commonplace faculty ; he that has the 
former is a sorrow to himself and a vexation to his 
hearers, while one whose speech is equal to his 
needs, and who knows his limitations, adds some- 
thing to the treasury of song, and is able to shine in 



lo Robert Brotvnins;. 



his place, " and be content.' Certain effects are 
suggested by nature; the poet discovers new com- 
binations within the ground which these afford. 
Ruskin has shown that in the course of years, though 
long at fault, the masses come to appreciate any 
admirable work. By inversion, if, after a long time 
has passed, the world still is repelled by a singer, 
and finds neither rest nor music in him, the fault is 
not with the world ; there is something deficient in 
his genius,^ he is so much the less a poet. 

The distinction between poetry and prose must 
be sharply observed. Poetry is an art, — a specific 
fact, which, owing to the vagueness fostered by 
minor wits, we do not sufficiently insist upon. We 
hear it said that an eloquent prose passage is poetry, 
that a sunset is a poem, and so on. This is well 
enough for rhetorical effect yet wholly untrue, and 
no poet should permit himself to talk in that way. 
Poetry is poetry, because it differs from prose ; it is 
artificial, and gives us pleasure because we know it 
to be so. It is beautiful thought expressed in rhyth- 
mical form, not half expressed or uttered in the 



Robert Browning. ir 

form of prose. It is a metrical structure ; a spirit 
not disembodied, but in the flesh, — so as to affect 
the senses of living men. Such is the poetry of 
Earth ; what that of a more spiritual region may be 
I know not. Milton and Keats never were in doubt 
as to the meaning of the art. It is true that fine 
prose is a higher form of expression than wretched 
verse ; but when a distinguished young English poet 
thus writes to me, — 

" My own impression is that Verse is an inferior, or infant, 
form of speech, which will ultimately perish altogether. . . 
The Seer, the Vates, the teacher of a new truth, is single, 
while what you call artists are legion," 

— when I read these words, I remember that the 
few great seers have furnished models for the sim- 
plest and greatest form of art ; I feel that this poet 
is growing heretical with respect, not to the law of 
custom, but to a law which is above us all ; I fear 
to discover a want of beauty, a vague transcenden- 
talism, rather than a clear inspiration, in his verse, 

— to see him become prosaic and substitute rhetoric 
for passion, realism for naturalness, affectation for 



12 Robert Brow7tmg. 

lofty thought, and, " having been praised for blunt- 
ness," to " affect a saucy roughness." In short, he 
is on the edge of danger. Yet his remark denotes 
a just impatience of forms so hackneyed that, once 
beautiful, they now are stale and corrupt. It may 
be necessary, with the Pre-Raphaelites, to escape 
their thraldom and begin anew. But the poet is a 
creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely en- 
deavor to say in prose what can only be expressed 
in song. And I have faith that my friend's wings 
will unfold, in spite of himself, and lift him bravely 
as ever on their accustomed flights. 

Has the lapse of years made Browning any more 
attractive to the masses, or even to the judicious 
few ? He is said to have " succeeded by a series of 
failures," and so he has, as far as notoriety means 
success, and despite the recent increase of his faults. 
But what is the fact which strikes the admiring and 
sympathetic student of his poetry and career ? Dis- 
trusting my own judgment, I asked a clear and im- 
partial thinker, — " How does Browning's work im- 
press you ? " His reply, after a moment's consider- 



Robert Browning. 13 

ation was: " Now that I try to formulate the sen- 
sation which it always has given me, his work seems 
that of a grand intellect painfully striving for ade- 
quate use and expression, and never quite attain- 
ing either." This was, and is, precisely my own 
feeling. The . question arises, What is at fault ? 
Browning's genius, his chosen mode of expression, 
his period, or one and all of these ? After the 
flush of youth is over, a poet must have a wise 
method, if he would move ahead. He must improve 
upon instinct by experience and common-sense. 
There is something amiss in one who has to grope 
for his theme and cannot adjust himself to his per- 
iod ; especially in one who cannot agreeably handle 
such themes as he arrives at. More than this, how- 
ever, is the difficulty in Browning's case. Expres- 
sion is the flower of thought ; a fine imagination is 
wont to be rhythmical and creative, and many pas- 
sages, scattered throughout Browning's works, show 
that his is no exception. It is a certain caprice 
or perverseness of method, that, by long practice, 
has injured his gift of expression ; while an abnor- 



14 Robert Broivning. 

mal power of ratiocination, and a prosaic regard for 
details, have handicapped him from the begin- 
ning. Besides, in mental arrogance and scorn of 
authority, he has insulted Beauty herself, and fur- 
nished too much excuse for small offenders. What 
may be condoned in one of his breed is intolerable 
when mimicked by every jackanapes and self-ap- 
pointed reformer. 

A group of evils, then, has interfered with the 
greatness of his poetry. His style is that of a man 
caught in a morass of ideas through which he has to 
travel, — wearily floundering, grasping here and 
there, and often sinking deeper until there seems no 
prospect of getting through. His latest works have 
been more involved and excursive, less beautiful 
and elevating, than most of those which preceded 
them. Possibly his theory is that which was his 
wife's instinct, — a man being more apt than a wom- 
an with some reason for what he does, — that poetry 
is valuable only for the statement which it makes, 
and must always be subordinate thereto. • Neverthe- 
less, Emerson, in this country, seems to have fol- 



Robert Browning. 15 

lowed a kindred method ; and who of our poets is 
greater, or so wise ? 

III. 

Browning's early lyrics, and occasional passages 
of recent date, show that he has melodious intervals, 
and can be very artistic with no loss of original 
power. Often the ring of his verse is sonorous, and 
overcomes the jagged consonantal diction with stir- 
ring lyrical effect. The '' Cavalier Tunes " are 
examples. Such choruses as 

" JMarchinc: along, fifty-score strong, 
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song ! " 

" King CharleSjvand who'll do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse : here's, in Hell's despite now, 
King Charles ! " 

— these, with, "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away !" 
show that Browning can put in verse the spirit of a 
historic period, and has, or had, in him the making 
of a lyric poet. How fresh and wholesome this 
work ! Finer still that superb stirrup-piece, best of 



1 6 Robert Browning. 

its class in the language, " How they brought the 
good news from Ghent to Aix." " Ratisbon" and 
" The Lost Leader," no less, are poems that fasten 
themselves upon literature, and will not be forgotten. 
The old fire flashes out, thirty years after, in 
" Herve Riel," another vigorous production, — 
unevenly sustained, but on a level with Longfellow's 
legendary ballads and sagas. From among lighter 
pieces I will select for present mention two, very 
unlike each other ; one, as delightful a child's poem 
as ever was written, in fancy and airy extravagance, 
and having a wildness and pathos all its own,— the 
daintest bit of folk-lore in English verse, — to what 
should I refer but '' The Pied Piper of Hamelin ?" 
The author made a strong bid for the love of chil- 
dren, when he placed "By Robert Browning" at its 
head, in the collection of his poems. The other, 

" Beauliful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour," 

appeals, like Wordsworth's " She dwelt among the 
untrodden ways," and Landor's " Rose Aylmer," to 



Robert Browm7ig. 17 

the hearts of learned and unlettered, one and 
all. 

Browning's style is the more aggressive, because, 
in compelling beauty itself to suffer a change and 
conform to all exigencies, it presents such a con- 
trast to the refined art of our day. I have shown 
that much of this is due to natural awkwardness, — 
but that the author is able, on fortunate occasions, 
to better his work, has just been amply illustrated. 
More often he either has let his verse have its way, 
or has shaped a theory of art by his own restrictions, 
and with that contempt for the structure of his 
song which Plato and St. Paul entertained for their 
fleshly bodies. If the mischief ceased here, it would 
not be so bad, but his genius has won pupils who 
copy his vices without his strength. He and his 
wife injured each the other's style as much as they 
sustained their common aspiration and love of 
poesy. To be sure, there was a strange similarity, 
by nature, between their modes of speech ; and 
what I have said of the woman's obscurity, affecta- 
tions, elisions, will apply to the man's — with his 



1 8 Robert Browning. 

Vthes and dtJies^ his dashes, breaks, halting measures, 
and oracular exclamations that convey no dramatic 
meaning to the reader. Her verse is the more 
spasmodic ; his, the more metaphysical, and, while 
effective in the best of his dramatic lyrics, is con- 
stantly running into impertinences worse than those 
of his poorest imitators, and which would not be 
tolerated for a moment in a lesser poet. Parodies 
on his style, thrown off as burlesques, are more 
intelligible than much of his " Dramatis Personae." 
Unlike Tennyson, he does not comprehend the 
limits of a theme ; nor has he an idea of the relative 
importance either of themes or details ; his mind is 
so alert that its minutest turn of thought must be 
uttered ; he dwells with equal precision upon the 
meanest and grandest objects, and laboriously jots 
down every point that occurs to him, — parenthesis 
within parenthesis, — until we have a tangle as 
intricate as the line drawn by an anemometer upon 
the recording-sheet. The poem is all zigzag, criss- 
cross, at odds and ends, — and, though we come out 
right at last, strength and patience are exhausted in 



Robert Browning. 



19 



mastering it. Apply the rule that nothing should be 
told in verse which can be told in prose, and half 
his measures would be condemned ; since their chief 
metrical purpose is, through the stress of rhythm, to 
fix our attention, by a certain unpleasant fascina- 
tion, upon a process of reasoning from which it 
otherwise would break away. 

For so much of Browning's crudeness as comes 
from inability to express himself, or to find a proper 
theme, he may readily be forgiven ; but whatever is 
due to real or assumed irreverence for the divine 
art, among whose votaries he stands enrolled, is a 
grievous wrong, unworthy of the humble and 
delightful spirit of a true craftsman. He forgets 
that art is the bride of the imagination, from whose 
embraces true creative work must spring. Lastly, 
concerning realism, while poets are, as Mrs. Brown- 
ing said, ^' your only truth-tellers," it is not well that 
repulsive or petty facts should always be recorded ; 
only the high, essential truths demand a poet's 
illumination. The obscurity wherein Browning dis- 
guises his realism is but the semblance of imagina- 



20 Robert Bnnvning. 

tion, — a mist through which rugged details jut out, 
while the central truth is feebly to be seen. 

IV. 

After a period of study at the London University 
young Browning, in 1832, went to Italy, and acquired 
a remarkable knowledge of the Italian life and lan- 
guage. He mingled with all classes of the people, 
mastered details, and rummaged among the monas- 
teries of Lombardy and Venice, studying mediaeval 
history, and filling his mind with the relics of a 
bygone time. All this had much to do with the 
bent of his subsequent work, and possibly was of 
more benefit to his learning than to his ideality. 

At the age of twenty-three he published his first 
drama, Paracelsus ^ a most unique production, — 
strictly speaking, a metaphysical dialogue, as notice- 
able for analytic power as the romances of Keats for 
pure beauty. It did not find many readers, but no 
man of letters could peruse it without seeing that a 
genuine poet had come to light. From that time 
the author moved in the literary society of London, 



Robert Browning. 21 

and was recognized as one who had done something 
and might do something more. The play is " Faust," 
with the action and passion, and much of the poetry 
and music, — upon which the fascination of the Ger- 
man work depends, — omitted ; the hero resembles 
" Faust " in the double aspiration to know and to 
enjoy, to search out mystical knowledge, yet drink 
at all the fountains of pleasure, — lest, after a long 
struggle, failing of knowledge, he should have lived 
in vain. It must be understood that Mr. Brown- 
ing's Paracelsus was his own creation : a man of 
heroic longings, observed at various intervals, from 
his twentieth year, in which he leaves his native 
hamlet until he dies at the age of forty-eight, — 
obscure, and with his ideal seemingly unattained ; 
not the juggler, empiric, and charlatan of history, 
whose record the poet frankly gives us in a foot- 
note. 

This poem has every characteristic of Browning's 
genius. The verse is as strong and as weak as the 
best and worst he has composed during thirty years, 
and is pitched in a key now familiar to us all. 



2 2 Robert Browning. 

" Paracelsus," the fruit of his youth, serves as well 
for a study of this poet as any later effort, and, 
though inferior to " Pippa Passes " and " In a Bal- 
cony," is much better than his newest romance in 
blank verse. I cannot agree with critics Avho say 
that he did his poorest work first and has been mov- 
ing along an ascending scale ; on the contrary, his 
faults and beauties have been somewhat evenly dis- 
tributed throughout his career. We are vexed in 
^' Paracelsus " by a vice that haunts him still, — that 
tedious garrulity which, however relieved by beauti- 
ful passages, palls on the reader and weakens the 
general effect. As an offset, he displays in this 
poem, with respect to every kind of poetic faculty 
except the sense of proportion, gifts equal to those 
of any compeer. By turns he is surpassingly fine. 
We have strong dramatic diction ; — 

" Festus, strange secrets are let out by Death, 
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world : 
And I am Death's familiar, as you know. 
I helped a man to die, some few weeks since ; 

. . . . No mean trick 



Robert Browning. 23 

He left untried ; and truly wellnigh wormed 
All traces of God's finger out of him. 
Then died, grown old ; and just an hour before — 
Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes — 
He sate up suddenly, and with natural voice 
Said, that in spite of thick air and closed doors 
God told him it was June , and he knew well, 
Without such telling, harebells grew in June ; 
And all that kings could ever give or take 
Would not be precious as those blooms to him," 

The conception is old as Shakespeare, but the 
manner is large and effective. Few authors vary 
the breaks and pauses of their blank verse so natur- 
ally as Browning, and none can so well dare to 
extend the proper limits of a poem. Here, as in 
later plays, he shows a more realistic perception of 
scenery and nature than is common with dramatic 
poets. We have a bit of painting at the outset, in 
the passage beginning, 

" Nay Autumn wins you best by this its mute 
Appeal to sympathy for its decay ! " 

and others, equally fine and true, are scattered 
throughout the dialogue. 



24 Robert Browniiig. 

'' Paracelsus " is meant to illustrate the growth 
and progress of a lofty spirit, groping in the dark- 
ness of his time. He first aspires to knowledge, 
and fails ; then to pleasure and knowledge, and 
equally fails — to human eyes. The secret ever 
seems close at hand : — 

"Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile ! 
We get so near — so very, very near ! 
'Tis an old tale : Jove strikes the Titans down 
Not when they set about their mountain-piling, 
But when another rock would crown their work !" 

Now, it is a part of Browning's life-long habit, 
that he here refuses to judge by ordinary standards, 
and makes the hero's attainment lie even in his fail- 
ure and death. There are fcAv more daring asser- 
tions of the soul's absolute freedom than the words 
of Festus, impressed by the nobility of his dying 
friend : — 

" I am for noble Aureole, God ! 
I am upon his side, come weal or woe ! 
His portion shall be mine ! He has done well ! 
I would have sinned, had I been strong enough, 



Robert Browning. 25 

As he has sinned ! Reward him, or I waive 
Reward ! If thou canst find no place for him 
He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be 
His slave forever ! There are two of us 1'^ 



The drama is well worth preserving, and even 
now a curious and highly suggestive study. Its 
lyrical interludes seem out of place. Astan author's 
first essay, it promised more for his future than if it 
had been a finished production, and in any other 
case but that of the capricious, tongue-tied Brown- 
ing, the promise might have been abundantly ful- 
filled. 

In "Strafford," his second drama, the interest 
also centres upon the struggles and motives of one 
heroic personage, this time entangled in a fatal 
mesh 01 great events. Apparently the poet, after 
some experience of authorship, wished to commend 
his work to popular sympathy, and tried to write a 
play that should be fitted for the stage ; hence a 
tragedy dedicated to Macready, of which the chief 
character, — the hapless Earl of Strafford, — was 
assumed by that tragedian, but with no marked sue- 



26 Robert B 7' owning. 

cess. The action, in compliance with history, moves 
with sufficient rapidity, yet in a confused and turbu- 
lent way. The characters are eccentrically drawn, 
and are more serious and mystical than even the 
gloom of their period would demand. It is hard to 
perceive the motives of Lady Carlisle and the 
Queen ; there is no underplot of love in the play, to 
develop the womanly element, nor has it the humor 
of the great playwrights, — so essential to dramatic 
contrast, and for which the Puritans and Jhe Lon- 
don populace might afford rich material. Imagine 
Macready stalking portentously through the piece, 
the audience trying to follow the story, and bored 
beyond endurance by the solemn speeches of Pym 
and Strafford, which answer for a death-scene at the 
close. The language is more natural than is usual 
with Browning, but here, where he is least eccentric, 
he becomes tame — until we see that he is out of 
his element, and prefer his striking psychology to a 
forced attempt at writing of the academic kind. 

Something of this must have struck the poet him* 
self for, as if chagrined at his failure, he swung back 



Robert Browm?7g. 27 

to the other extreme, and beyond his early starting- 
place ; farther, happily, than any point he since has 
ventured to reach. In no one of his recent works 
has he been quite so "hard," loquacious, and im- 
practicable as in the renowned nondescript entitled 
Sordello. Twenty-three years after its appearance 
he owned that its " faults of expression were many," 
and added, " but with care for a man or book such 
would be surmounted."- The acknowledgment was 
partial. " Sordello " is a fault throughout, in con- 
ception and execution : nothing is " expressed, " 
not even the "incidents in the development of a 
soul," though such incidents may have had some 
nebulous origin in the poet's mind. It is asking 
too much of our care for a book or a man that we 
should surmount this chaotic mass of word-building. 
Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus " is a hard study, but, 
once entered upon, how poetical ! what lofty 
episodes ! what wisdom, beauty, and scorn ! Few 
such treasures await him that would read the eleven 
thousand verses into which the fatal facility of the 
rhymed-heroic measure has led the muse of Brown- 



28 Robert Browning. 

ing. The structure, by its very ugliness and bulk, 
like some half buried colossus in the desert, may 
survive a lapse of time. I cannot persuade myself 
to solicit credit for deeper insight by differing from 
the common judgment with regard to this unattrac- 
tive prodigy. 

It had its uses, seemingly, in acting as a purge to 
cleanse the visual humors of the poet's eyes and to 
leave his general system in an auspicious condition. 
His next six years were devoted to the composition 
of a picturesque group of dramas, — the exact order 
of which escapes me, but which finally were collec- 
ted in Bells and Poniegra7iates^ a popular edition, 
issued in serial numbers, of this raaturer work. 
" Luria," " King Victor and King Charles," and 
*' The Return of the Druses," are stately pieces, 
historical or legendary, cast in full stage-form. In 
Luria we again see Browning's favorite characteri- 
zation, from a different point of view. This is a 
large-moulded, suffering hero, akin, if disturbed in 
conscience, to Wallenstein, — if devoted and magnan- 
imous, to Othello. Luria, the Moor, is like 



Robert Browning. 29 

Othello in many ways : a brave and skillful 
general, who serves Florence (instead of Venice), and 
declares, 

" I can and have perhaps obliged the 1 state, 
Nor paid a mere son's duty. " 

He is so true and simple, that Domizia says of 
him, 

" How plainly is true greatness charactered 
By such unconsciousness as Luria's here. 
And sharing least the secret of itself ! " 

Browning makes devotion to an ideal or trust, how- 
ever unworthy of it, the chief trait of this class of 
personages. Strafford dies in behalf of ungrateful 
Charles ; Luria is sacrificed by the Florence he has 
saved, and destroys himself at the moment when 
love and honor are hastening, too late, to crown 
him. Djabal, false to himself, is true to the cause of 
the Druses, and at last dies in expiation of his fault. 
Valence, in " Colombe's Birthday," shows devotion 
of a double kind, but is rewarded for his fidelity and 
honor. Luitolfo, in " A Soul's Tragedy," is of a 
kindred type. But I am anticipating. The language 



3© Robert Broivning. 

of " Luria " often is in the grand manner. In depict- 
ing the Moorish general and his friend Husain, — 
brooding, generous children of the sun, — the 
soldierly Tiburzio, painted with a few ma:ter- 
strokes, — and in the element of Italian craft and 
intrigue, the author is at home and well served by 
his knowledge of mediaeval times. That is an eloquent 
speech of Domizia, near the end of the fourth act. 
Despite the poverty of action, and the prolonged 
harangues, this drama is worthy of its dedication to 
Landor and the wish that it might be " read by his 
light " : almost worthy (Landor always weighed out 
gold for silver !) of the old bard"s munificent return 
of praise : — 

** Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, 
Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 
Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale. 
No man hath walked along our roads with step 
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze 
Of Alpine hei-^ht thou playest with, borne on 
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song." 



Robert Broivning. 31 

*The Return of the Druses," with its scenic and 
choric effects, is like some of Byron's plays : the 
scene, an isle of the Sporades ; the legend, half 
Venetian, half Oriental, one that only Browning 
could make available. The girl Anael is an impas- 
sioned character, divided between adoration for 
Hakeem, the god of her race, — whom she believes 
incarnate in Djabal, — and her love for Djabalas a 
man. The tragedy, amid a good deal of trite and 
pedantic language, is marked by heroic situations 
and sudden dramatic catastrophes. Several brilliant 
points are made : one, where the Prefect lifts the 
arras, on the other side of which death awaits him, 
and says, — 

** This is the first time for long years I enter 
Thus, without feeling just as I lifted 
The lid up of my tomb ! . . . . 

Let me repeat — for the first time, no draught 
Coming as from a sepulchre salutes me ! " 

A moment, and the dagger is through his heart. 
Another such is the wonder and contempt of Anael 



32 • Robert Browning. 

at finding Djabal no deity, but an impostor ; while 
perhaps the most telling point in the whole series of 
Browning's plays is her cry of Hakeem I made when 
she comes to denounce Djabal, but, moved by love, 
proclaims him as the god, and falls dead with the 
effort. The poet, however, is justly censured for too 
frequently taking off his personages by the intensity 
of their own passions, without recourse to the dag- 
ger and bowl. He rarely does it after the "high 
Roman fashion." 

This tragedy observes the classic unities of time 
and place. A hall in the Prefect's palace is made to 
cover its entire action, which occupies only one 
day. In its earnest pitch and lack of sprightly 
underplot, it also is Greek or Italian. Not long 
ago, listening to Salvini in "Samson" and other 
plays, I was struck by their likeness, in simplicity of 
action and costume, to the antique dramas. The 
actors were sufficient to themselves, and the 
audience was intent upon their lofty speech and 
passion ; there was no lack of interest, but a refresh- 
ing spiritual elevation. The Gothic method better 



Robert Browning, y^ 

suits the English stage, nevertheless we need not 
refuse to profit by the experience of other lands. 
Our poetry, like the language, should draw its riches 
from all tongues and races, and well can endure a 
larger infusion of the ancient grandeur and simplic- 
ity. In the play before us Browning has but renew- 
ed the debt, long since incurred, of English literat- 
ure to the Italian, — greater than that to all other 
sources combined. Not without reason, in " De 
Gustibus," he sang, — 

" Open my heart and you will see, 
Graved inside of it, 'Italy.' 
Such lovers old are I and she ; 
So it always was, so it still shall be ! " 

"King Victor," is one of those conventional 
plays in which he appears to ordinary advantage. 
His three dramatic masterpieces are *' Pippa 
Passes," ''A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." and 
" Colombe's Birthday." 

The last-named play, inscribed to Barry Cornwall, 
really is a fresh and lovely little drama. The 
fair young heroine has possessed her duchy for a 



34 Robert Browning, 

single year, and now, upon her birthday, as she 
unsuspectingly awaits the greetings of her courtiers, 
is called upon to surrender her inheritance to 
Prince Berthold, decreed to be the lawful heir. At 
the same time Valence, a poor advocate of Cleves, 
seeks audience in behalf of his suffering townsmen, 
and ends by defending the Duchess's title to her 
rank. She loves him, and is so impressed by his 
nobility and courage as to decline the hand of the 
Prince, and surrender her duchy, to become the wife 
of Valence, with whom she joyfully retires to the 
ruined castle where her youth was spent. This 
play might be performed to the great interest of an 
audience composed exclusively of intellectual per- 
sons, who could follow the elaborate dialogue and 
would be charmed with its poetry and subtle 
thought. Once accept the manner of Browning, 
and you must be pleased with the delineation of the 
characters. " Colombe " herself is exquisite, and 
like one of Shakespeare's women. Valence seems 
too harsh and dry to win her, and her choice, des- 
pite his loyalty and intellect, is hardly defensible. 



Robert Brownirig. 35 

Still, "Colombe's Birthday" is the most natural 
and winsome of the author's stage-plays. 

" A Blot in the 'Scutcheon " was brought out at 
Drury Lane, in 1843, and failed. This of course, 
for there is little in it to relieve the human spirit, — 
which cannot bear too much of earnestness and woe 
added'to the mystery and burden of our daily lives. 
Yet the piece has such tragic strength as to stamp 
the author as a great poet, though in a narrow 
range. One almost fopgets the singular improbabil- 
ities of the story, the blase talk of the child-lovers 
(an English Juliet of fourteen is against nature), 
the stiff language of the retainers, and various other 
blemishes. There is a serenade in which, unchecked 
by his fear of detection, Mertoun is made to sing 
under Mildred's window, — 

" There's a woman like the dew drop, she's so purer than the 
purest ! *' 

This song, composed seven years before the poet's 
meeting with Miss Barrett, is precisely in the style 
of " Lady Geraldine's Courtship," and other bal- 
lads of the gifted woman who became his wife. 



36 Robert Broivning. 

The most simple and varied of his plays — that 
which shows every side of his genius, has most light- 
ness and strength, and all in all may be termed a rep- 
resentative poem — is the beautiful drama with the 
quaint title of " Pippa Passes." It is a cluster of 
four scenes, with prologue, epilogue, and interludes ; 
half prose, half poetry, varying with the refinement 
of the dialogue. Pippa is a delicately pure, good, 
blithesome, peasant-maid. " ' Tis but a little black- 
eyed, pretty, singing Felippa, gay silk-winding girl," 
— though with token, ere the end, that she is the 
child of a nobleman, put out of the way by a villain, 
Maifeo, at instigation of the next heir. Pippa knows 
nothing of this, but is piously content with her life 
of toil. It is New Year's Day at Asolo. She springs 
from bed, in her garret chamber, at sunrise, — resolv- 
ed to enjoy to the full her sole holiday : she will 
not " squander a wavelet " of it, not a " mite of her 
twelve hours' treasure." Others can be happy 
throughout the year : haughty Ottima and Sebald, 
the lovers on the hill ; Jules and Phene, the artist 
and his bride ; Luigi and his mother ; Monsignor, 



Robert Browning. 37 

the Bishop ; but Pippa has only this one day to 
enjoy. She envies these great ones a little, but 
reflects that God's love is best, after all. And yet, 
how little can she do ! How can she possibly affect 
the world ? Thus she muses, and goes out, singing, 
to her holiday and the sunshine. Now, it so happens 
that she passes, this day, each of the groups or 
persons we have named, at an important crisis in 
their lives, and they hear her various carols as she 
trills them forth in the innocent gladness of her 
heart. Sebald and Ottima have murdered the 
latter's aged husband, and are unremorseful in their 
guilty love. Jules is the victim of a fraud practised 
by his rival artists, who have put in his way a young 
girl, a paid model, whom he believes to be a pure 
and cultured maiden. He has married her, and just 
discovered the imposture. Luigi is hesitating whether 
to join a patriotic conspiracy. Monsignor is tempted 
by Maffeo to overlook his late brother's murder, for 
the sake of the estates, and to utterly ruin Pippa. 
The scene between Ottima and Sebald is the most 
intense and striking passage of all Browning's 



3$ Robert Browning. 

poetry, and, possibly, of any dramatic verse compos- 
ed during his lifetime up to the date of this play. 
A passionate esoteric theme is treated with such 
vigor and skill as to free it from any debasing taint, 
in the dialogue from which I quote : — 

•' Ottima. . , The past, would you give up the past 
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together ? 
Give up that noon I owned my love for you — 
The garden's silence — even the single bee. 
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopt, 
And where he hid you only could surmise 
By some campanula's chalice set a-swing 
As he clung there — ' Yes, I love you ! ' 

Sebald. And I drew 

Back ; put far back your face with both my hands 
Lest you should grow too full of me — your face 
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body ! 

Ottima. Then our crowning night — 

Sebald. The July night? 

Ottima. The day of it too, Sebald ! 
When the heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat. 
Its black blue canopy seemed let descend 
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, 
And smother up all life except our life 
So lay we till the storm came. 

Sebald. How it came ! 



Robert Browning. 39 

Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect 
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead ; 
And ever and anon some bright white shaft 
Burnt thro' the pine-tree roof, — here burnt and there, 
As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen 
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, 
Feeling for guilty thee and me : then broke 
The thunder like a whole sea overhead — 

Sebald. Yes ! 

How did we ever rise? 
Was it that we slept ? Why did it end ? 

Ottijua. I felt you, 

Fresh tapering to a point the ruffled ends 
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips — 
(My hair is fallen now — knot it again !) 

Sebald. I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now, and now ! 
This way ? Will you forgive me — be once more 
My great queen ? 

Ottima. Bind it thrice about my brow ; 

Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, 
Magnificent in sin. Say that ! 

Sebald. I crown you 

My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, 
Magnificent — " 

But here Pippa passes, singing 

" God's in his heaven, — 
All's right with the world ! " 



40 Robert Browning. 

Sebald is stricken with fear and remorse ; his para- 
mour becomes hideous in his eyes ; he bids her 
dress her shoulders, wipe off that paint, and leave 
him, for he hates her ! She, the woman, is at least 
true to her lover, and prays God to be merciful, not 
to her, but to him. 

The scene changes to the post-nuptial meeting of 
Jules and Phene, and then in succession to the 
other passages and characters we have mentioned. 
All these persons are vitally affected, — have their 
lives changed, merely by Pippa's weird and 
suggestive songs, coming, as if by accident, upon 
their hearing at that critical moment. With certain 
reservations this is a strong and delicate conception, 
admirably worked out. The usual fault is present : 
the characters, whether students, peasants, or 
soldiers, all talk like sages ; Pippa reasons like a 
Paracelsus in pantalets, — her intellectual songs are 
strangely put in the mouth of an ignorant silk- 
winding girl ; Phene is more natural, though mature, 
even for Italy, at fourteen. Browning's children are 
old as himself ; — he rarely sees them objectively. 



Robert Brownmg. 41 

Even in the songs he is awkward, void of lyric 
grace ; if they have the wilding flavor, they have 
more than need be of specks and gnarledness. In 
the epilogue Pippa seeks her garret, and, as she dis- 
robes, after artlessly running over the events of her 
holiday, soliloquizes thus : — 

'* Now, one thing I should like really to know: 
How near I ever might approach all these 
I only fancied being, this long day — 
— Approach, I mean, so as to touch them — so 
Asto . . in some way . . move them — if you please^ 
Do good or evil to them some slight way. " 

Finally, she sleeps, — unconscious of her day's mis- 
sion, — and of the fact that her own life is to be 
something more than it has been, — but not until 
she has murmured these words of a hymn : — 

"All service is the same with God, — 
With God, whose puppets, best and worst. 
Are we : there is no last nor first." 

*' Pippa Passes" is a work of pure art, and has a 
wealth of original fancy and romance, apart from 



42 Rohe7-t Brownhig. 

its wisdom, to which every poet will do justice. Its 
faults are those of style and undue intellectuality. 
To quote the author's words, in another drama, 

" Ah? well ! he o'er-refines, — the scholar's fault ! * 

As it is, we accept his work, looking upon it as up- 
on some treasured yet bizarre painting of the mixed 
school, whose beauties are the more striking for its 
defects. The former are inherent, the latter exter- 
nal and subordinate. 

Everything from this poet is, or used to be, of 
value and interest, and '' A Soul's Tragedy " 
is of both : first, for a masterly distinction 
between the action of sentiment and that founded 
on principle, and, secondly, for wit, satire, and 
knowledge of affairs. Ogniben, the Legate, is the 
most thorough man of the world Browning has 
drawn. That is a matchless stroke, at the close, 
where he says: " I have seen four-and-twenty leaders 
of revolts." It is a consolation to recall this when 
a pretender arises ; his race is measured, — his fall 
shall surely come. 



Robert B?'owning. 43 

With '' Luria," thirty years ago, Browning, whose 
stage-plays had been failures, and whose closet-dra- 
mas had found too small a reading, made his " last 
attempt, for the present, at dramatic poetry." It 
remains to examine his miscellaneous after-work, 
including the long poems which have appeared 
within the last five years, — the most prolific, if not 
the most creative, period of his untiring life. 

V. 

Something of a dramatic character pertains to \ 
nearly all of Brownmg's lyrics. Like his wife, he ' 
has preferred to study human hearts rather than the 
forms of nature.) A note to the first collection of 
his briefer poems places them under the head of 
Dramatic Pieces. This was at a time when English 
poets were enslaved to the idyllic method, and for- 
got that their readers had passions most suggestive 
to art when exalted above the tranquillity of pictur- 
esque repose. Herein Browning justly may claim 
originality. Even the Laureate combined the art 
of Keats with the contemplative habit of Words- 



44 Robert Broivmng. 

worth, and adapted them to his own times ; while 
Browning was the prophet of that reaction which 
holds that the proper study of mankind is man. 
His effort, weak or able, was at figure-painting, in 
distinction from that of landscape or still life. It 
has not flourished during the recent period, but we 
are indebted to him for what we have of it. In an 
adverse time it was natural for it to assume peculiar, 
almost morbid phases ; but of this struggling, turbid 
figure-school, — variously represented by the young- 
er Lytton, Rossetti, Swinburne, and others, he was 
the long-neglected progenitor. His genius may 
have been unequal to his aims. It is not easy for 
him to combine a score of figures upon the ample 
canvas : his work is at its best in separated ideals, 
or, rather, in portraits, — his dramatic talent being 
more realistic than imaginative. Still, portraiture, 
in a certain sense, is the highest form of painting, 
and Browning's personal studies must not be under- 
valued. As usual, even here he is unequal, and, 
while some of them are matchless, in others, like all 
men of genius who aim at the highest, he conspicu- 



Robert Brouming. 45 

ously fails. A man of talent may never fail, yet 
never rise above a fixed height. Yet if Browning 
were a man of great genius his failures would not 
so outnumber his successes that half his lyrics could 
be missed without injury to his reputation. 

The shorter pieces, " Dramatic Romances and 
Lyrics," in the first general collection of his works, 
are of a better average grade than those in his latest 
book of miscellanies. One of the best is '* My Last 
Duchess," a masterly sketch, comprising within sixty 
lines enough matter to furnish Browning, nowadays, 
with an excuse for a quarto. Nothing can be sub- 
tler than the art whereby the Duke is made to reveal 
a cruel tragedy of which he was the relentless vil- 
lain, to betray the blackness of his heart, and to 
suggest a companion-tragedy in his betrothal close 
at hand. Thus was introduced a new method, ap- 
plied with such coolness as to suggest the idea of 
vivisection or morbid anatomy. 

But let us group other lyrics in this collection 
with the matter of two later volumes, Men and Wo- 
men^ and Dni7fiatis Personce. These books, made 



46 Robert Broiuning. 

up of isolated poems, contain the bulk of his work 
during the eighteen years which followed his mar- 
riage in 1846. While their contents include no long 
poem or drama, they seem, upon the whole, to be 
the fullest expression of his genius, and that for which 
he is likeliest to be remembered. Every poet has 
limitations, and in such briefer studies Browning 
keeps within the narrowest bounds allotted to him. 
Very few of his best pieces are in " Dramatis Per- 
sonae," the greater part of which book is made up 
of his most ragged, uncouth, and even puerile verse ; 
and it is curious that it appeared at a time when his 
wife was scribbling the rhetorical verse of those 
years which I have designated as her period of 
decline. But observe the general excellence of the 
fifty poems in " Men and Women," — collected nine 
years earlier, when the author was forty years old, 
and at his prime. In the chapter upon Tennyson 
it was stated that almost every poet has a represen- 
tative book, showing him at full height and variety. 
" Men and Women," like the Laureate's volume of 
1842, is the most finished and comprehensive of the 



Robert Browning. 47 

author's works, and the one his readers least could 
spare. Here we find numbers of those thrilling, 
skilfully dramatic studies, which so many have imi- 
tated without catching the secret of their power. 

The general effect of Browning's miscellaneous 
poems is like that of a picture-gallery, where cabi- 
net paintings, by old and modern masters, are placed 
at random upon the walls. Some are rich in color ; 
others, strong in light and shade. A few are elabora- 
tely finished, — more are careless drawings, fresh, but 
hurriedly sketched in. Often the subjects are re- 
pulsive, but occasionally we have the solitary, im- 
pressive figure of a lover or a saint. 

The poet is as familiar with mediaeval thought 
and story as most authors with their own time, and 
adapts them to his lyrical uses. " Andrea del Sarto" 
belongs to the same group with " My Last Duchess." 
It is the language of " the faultless painter," address- 
ed to his beautiful and thoughtless wife, for whom 
he has lowered his ideal — and from whose chains 
he cannot break, though he knows she is unworthy, 
and even false to him. He moans before one of 



48 Robert Bro7i>ftmg. 

Raphael's drawings, excusing the faults, in envy of 
the genius : — 

"Still, what an arm i and I could alter it. 
But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 
Out of me ! out of me ! And wherefore out ? 
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 
We might have risen to Raphael, I and you. 

But had you — O, with the same perfect brow, 
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth. 
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 
The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare, — 
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind ] 
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 
* God and the glory ! never care for gain ! ' 

I might have done it for you." 

AVere it indeed "all for love," then were the 
"world well lost "; but even while he dallies with 
his wife she listens for her gallant's signal. This 
poem is one of Browning's finest studies : of late he 
has given us nothing equal to it. The picture of 
the rollicking " Fra Lippo Lippi " is broad, free- 
handed, yet scarcely so well done. " Pictor Igno- 
tus " is upon another art-theme, and in quiet beauty 



Robe7't Browning. 49 

differs from the poet's usual manner. Other old- 
time studies, good and poor, which served to set 
the fashion for a number of minor poets, are such 
pieces as " Count Gismond," " Cristina," " The 
Laboratory," and '* The Confessional." 

How perilous an easy rhymed-metre is to this 
author was discernible in '* Sordello." After the 
same manner he is tempted to garrulity in the semi- 
religious poems, " Christmas Eve " and " Easter 
Day." It is difficult otherwise to account for their 
dreary flow, since they are no more original in 
theology than poetical in language and design. 

It would be strange if Browning were not 
indebted, for some of his most powerful themes, to 
the superstition from which mediaeval art, politics, 
and daily life took their prevailing tone. In his 
analysis of its quality he seems to me extremely 
profound. Monasticism in Spain even now is not 
so different from that of the fifteenth century, and 
the repulsive imagery of a piece like the " Soliloquy 
of the Spanish Cloister," written in the harshest 
verse, well consorts with a period when the orders, 
4 



50 Robert Browning. 

that took their origin in exalted purity, had become 
degraded through lust, gluttony, jealousy, and every 
cardinal sin. Browning draws his monks, as Dore 
in the illustrations to " Les Contes Drolatiques," 
with porcine or wolfish faces, monstrous, seamed 
with vice, defiled in body and soul. " The Bishop 
orders his Tomb " has been criticised as not being 
a faithful study of the Romish ecclesiastic, A. D. 
15 — ; but, unless I misapprehend the spirit of that 
period, this is one of the poet's strongest portrai- 
tures. Religion then was often a compound of 
fear, bigotry, and greed ; its officers, trained in the 
Church, seemed to themselves invested with some- 
thing greater than themselves ; their ideas of good 
and evil, after years of ritualistic service, — made 
gross with pelf, jealousy, sensualism, and even 
blood-guiltiness, — became strangely intermixed. 
The poet overlays this groundwork with that love 
of art and luxury — of jasper, peach-blossom marble, 
and lazuli — inbred in every Italian, — and even with 
the scholar's desire to have his epitaph carved 
aright : - — 



Robert Browning. 51 

" Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word. 
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line, — 
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need ! 
And then how I shall lie through centuries. 
And hear the blessed mutter of <he mass, 
And see God made and eaten all day long, 
And feel the steady candle- flame, and taste 
Good, strong, thick, stupefying incense-smoke ! " 

All this commanded to his bastards ! And for the 
rest, were ever suspicion, hatred, delight at outwit- 
ting a rival in love and preferment, and every other 
loathsome passion strong in death, more ruthlessly 
and truthfully depicted ? 

Of strictly mediaeval church studies, " The Her- 
etic's Tragedy " and " Holy-Cross Day," with their 
grotesque diction, annotations, and prefixes, are 
the most skilful reproductions essayed in our time. 
Browning alone could have conceived or written 
them. In " A Grammarian's Funeral," " Abt Vog- 
ler," and " Master Hugues," early scholarship and 
music are commemorated. The language of the 
simplest of these is so intricate that we have to be 
educated in a new tongue to comprehend them. 



52 Robert Browning. 

Their value lies in the human nature revealed under 
such fantastic, and, to us, unnatural aspects devel- 
oped in other times. 

" Artemis Prologuizes," the poet's antique sketch, 
is as unclassical as one might expect from its 
affected title. " Saul," a finer poem, may have fur- 
nished hints to Swinburne with respect to anapestic 
verse and the Hebraic feeling. Three poems, which 
strive to reproduce the early likeness and spirit of 
Christianity, merit close attention. One describes 
the raising of Lazarus, narrated in an " Epistle of 
Karshish, the Arab Physician." The pious, learned 
mage sees in the miracle 

" But a case of mania — subinduced 
By epilepsy, at the turning-point 
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days." 

" Cleon " is an exposition of the highest ground 
reached by the Pagan philosophy, set forth in a 
letter written, by a wise poet, to Protos, the King. 
At the end he makes light of the preachings of Paul, 
who is welcome to the few proselytes he can make 
among the ignorant slaves : — 



Robert Brow fling. 53 

" And (as I gathered from a bystander) 
Their doctrines could be held by no sane man," 

The reader is forced to stop and consider what 
despised doctrines even now may be afloat, which in 
time may constitute the whole world's creed. The 
most elaborate of these pieces is " A Death in the 
Desert," the last words of St. John, the Evangelist, 
recorded by Pamphylax, an Antiochene martyr. 
The prologue and epilogue are sufficiently pedantic, 
but, like the long-drawn narrative, so characteristic, 
that this curious production may be taken as a 
representative poem. A similar bit of realism is 
the sketch of a great poet, seen in every-day life by 
a fellow-townsman, entitled, " How it Strikes a 
Contemporary." And now, having selected a few 
of these miscellaneous pieces to represent the mass, 
how shall we define their true value, and their 
influence upon recent art ? 

Browning is justified in offering such works as a 
substitute for poetic treatment of English themes, 
since he is upon ground naturally his own. Yet as 
poems they fail to move us, and to gloriously elevate 



54 Robert Browning. 

the soul, but are the outgrowth of minute realism and 
speculation. To quote from one who is reviewing 
a kindred sort of literature, they sin, " against the 
spirit of antiquity, in carrying back the modern 
analytic feeling to a scene where it does not 
belong." It is owing precisely to this sin that 
several of Browning's longer works are literary and 
rhythmical prodigies, monuments of learning and 
labor rather than ennobling efforts of the imagina- 
tion. His hand is burdened by too great accumu- 
lation of details, — and then there is the ever-pres- 
ent spirit of Robert Browning peering from the 
eyes of each likeness, however faithful, that he 
portrays. 

He is the most intellectual of poets, Tennyson 
not excepted. Take, for example, "Caliban," with 
its text, " Thou thoughtest I was altogether such an 
one as thyself." The motive is a study of anthropo- 
morphism, by reflection of its counterpart in a 
lower animal, half man, half beast, possessed of the 
faculty of speech. The " natural theology " is food 
for thought ; the poetry, descriptive and otherwise. 



Robert Broivning. 55 

realism carried to such perfection as to seem imagin- 
ation. Here we have Browning's curious reasoning 
at its best. But what can be more vulgar and 
strictly unpoetical than " Mr. Sludge, the Medium," 
a composition of the same period ? Our familiarity 
with such types as those to which the author's 
method is here applied enables us to test it with any- 
thing but satisfaction. Applied to a finer subject, 
in "Bishop Blougram's Apology," we heartily 
admire its virile analysis of the motives actuating 
the great prelate, who after due reflection has 
rejected 

" A life of doubt diversified by faith 
For one of faith diversified by doubt." 

Cardinal Wiseman is worldly and insincere ; the 
poet, Gigadibs, is earnest and on the right side ; yet, 
somehow, we do not quite despise the churchman 
nor admire the poet. This piece is at once the 
foremost defence and arraignment of Philistinism, 
drawn up by a thinker broad enough to comprehend 
both sides. As an intellectual work, it is meat and 



56 Robert Broivjiing. 

wine ; as a poem, as a thing of beauty, — but that 
is quite another point in issue. 

Browning's offhand, occasional lyrics, such as 
'"Waring," "Time's Revenges," "Up in a Villa," 
" The Italian in England," '' By the Fireside," " The 
Worst of It," etc., are suggestive, and some of them 
widely familiar. His style has been caught by 
others. The picturesqueness and easy rhythm of 
" The Flight of the Duchess," and the touches in 
briefer lyrics, are repeated by minnesingers like 
Owen Meredith and Dobell. There is a grace and 
turn that still evades them, for sometimes their mas- 
ter can be as sweet and tuneful as Lodge, or any 
other of the skylarks. Witness " In a Gondola," 
that delicious Venetian cantata, full of music and 
sweet sorrow, or " One Way of Love," for example, 
— but such melodies are none too frequent. When 
he paints nature, as in " Home Thoughts, from 
Abroad," how fresh and fine the landscape ! 

"And after April, when May follows, 
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows, — 
Hark ! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 



Robert Browning. 57 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
Blossoms, and dew-drops — at the bent spray's edge — 
That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture ! " 

Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I never- 
theless think the last three lines the finest ever writ- 
ten touching the song of a bird. Contrast there- 
with the poet's later method, — the prose-run-mad 
of stanzas such as this : — 

" Hobbs hints blue, — straight he turtle eats. 

Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup. 
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — 

Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ? 
What porridge had John Keats ? " 

And this by no means the most impertinent of 
kindred verses in his books, — poetry that neither 
gods nor men can endure or understand, and yet 
interstrewn with delicate trifles, such as " Mem- 
orabilia," which for suggestiveness long will be 
preserved. Who so deft to catch the one immortal 
moment, the fleeting exquisite word ? Who so wont 
to reach for it, and wholly fail ? 



58 Robert Browning. 

VI. 

We come, at last, to a class of Browning's poems 
that I have grouped for their expression of that 
dominating sentiment, to which reference was made 
at the beginning of this review. Their moral is 
that of the apothegm that " Attractions are propor- 
tional to destinies " ; of rationalistic freedom, as 
opposed to Calvinism ; of a belief that the greatest 
sin does not consist in giving rein to our desires, 
but in stinting or too prudently repressing them. 
Life must have its full and free development. And, 
as love is the master-passion, he is most earnest in 
illustrating this belief from its good or evil progress, 
and to this end has composed his most impressive 
verse. 

A main lesson of Browning's emotional poetry is 
that the unpardonable sin is " to dare something 
against nature." To set bounds to love is to com- 
mit that sin. Through his instinct for conditions 
which engender the most dramatic forms of speech 
and action, he is, at least, as an artist, tolerant of 



Robert Browning. 59 

what is called an intrigue ; and that many com- 
placent English and American readers do not recog- 
nize this, speaks volumes either for their stupidity, 
or for their hypocrisy and inward sympathy in a 
creed which they profess to abhor. Affecting to 
comprehend and admire Browning, they still refuse 
to forgive Swinburne, — whose crude earlier poems 
brought the lust of the flesh to the edge of a gross- 
ness too palpable to be seductive, and from which 
his riper manhood has departed altogether. The 
elder poet, from first to last, has appeared to defend 
the elective affinities against impediments of law 
theology, or social rank. It is not my province to 
discuss the ethics of this matter, but simply to speak 
of it as a fact. 

It will not do to fall back upon Browning's pro- 
test, in the note to his " Dramatic Lyrics," that 
these are " so many utterances of so many imaginary 
persons," and not his own. For when he returns 
persistently to a certain theme, illustrates it in 
divers ways, and heaps the coals of genius upon it 
till it breaks out into flame, he ceases to be objective 



6o Robert Browning. 

and reveals his secret thought. No matter how 
conservative his habit, he is to be judged, like any 
artist, by his work ; and in all his poems we see a 
taste for the joys and sorrows of a free, irresponsible 
life, — like that of the Italian lovers, of students in 
their vagrant youth, or of Consuelo and her hus- 
band upon the windy heath. Above all, he tells 
us : — 

"Thou shalt know, those arms once curled 
About thee, what we knew before, 
How love is the only good in the world. " 

" In a Balcony " is the longest and finest of his 
emotional poems : a dramatic episode, in three dia- 
logues, the personages of which talk at too great 
length, — although, no doubt, many and varied 
thoughts flash through the mind at supreme 
moments, and it is Browning's custom to put them 
all upon the record. How clearly the story is 
wrought ! What exquisite language, and passion 
triumphant over life and death ! Mark the trans- 
formation of the lonely queen, in the one radiant 
hour of her life that tells her she is beloved, and 



Robert Brozuiiing. 6i 

makes her an angel of goodness and light. She 
barters power and pride for love, clutching at this 
one thing as at Heaven, and feels 

'* How soon a smile of God can change the world," 

Then comes the transformation, upon discovery 
of the cruel deceit, — her vengeance and despair. 
The love of Constance, who for it will surrender 
life, and even Norbert's hand, is more unselfish ; 
never more subtly, perhaps, than in this poem, has 
been illustrated Byron's epigram : — 

"In her first passion, woman loves her lover 
In all the others, all she loves is love." 

Here, too, is the profound lesson of the whole, 
that a word of the man Norbert's simple, blunder- 
ing truth would have prevented all this coil. But 
the poet is at his height in treating of the master 
passion : — 

*• Remember, I (and what am I to you ? ) 
Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life. 
Do all but just unlove him ! he loves me. " 



62 Robert Bro^vning. 

With fine abandonment he makes the real worth 
so much more than the ideal : — 

" We live, and they experiment on life, 
These poets, painters, all who stand aloof 
To overlook the farther. Let us be 
The thing they look at ! " 

But in a large variety of minor lyrics it is hinted 
that our instincts have something divine about 
them ; that, regardless of other obligations, we may 
not disobey the inward monition. A man not only 
may forsake father and mother and cleave to his 
wife ; but forsake his wife and cleave to the pre- 
destined one. No sin like repression ; no sting like 
regret ; no requital for the opportunity slighted and 
gone by. In "The Statue and the Bust," — a typi- 
cal piece, — had the man and woman seen clearly 
" the end " of life, though " a crime," they had not 
so failed of it : — 

" If you choose to play — is my principle ! 
Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! 



Robert Bi'owiiing. 63 

" The counter our lovers staked was lost 
As surely as if it were lawful coin : 
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 

*' Was, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say." 

" A Light Woman " turns upon the right of every 
soul, however despicable, to its own happiness, and 
to freedom from the meddling of others. The 
words of many lyrics, attesting the boundless liberty 
and sovereignty of love, are plainly written, and to 
say the lesson is not there is to ape those commenta- 
tors who discover an allegorical meaning in each 
Scriptural text that interferes with their special 
creeds. 

Both Browning and his wife possessed by nature 
a radical gift for sifting things to the core, an 
heroic disregard of every conventional gloss or 
institution. They were thoroughly mated in this 
respect, though one may have outstripped the other 
in exercise of the faculty. Their union, apparently, 
was so absolute that neither felt any need of fuller 
emotional life. The sentiment of Browning's pas- 



64 Robert Browtmig. 

sional verse, therefore, is not the outgrowth of per- 
ceptions sharpened by restraint. The poetry- 
addressed to his wife is, if anything, of a still high- 
er order. He watches her 

" Reading by firelight, that great brow 
And the spirit-small hand propping it 
Mutely — my heart knows how — 

*♦ When, if I think but deep enough, 
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme"; 

and again and again addresses her in such lines as 
these : — 

" God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
• One to show a woman when he loves her. 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 

Ah, but that's the world's side — there's the wonder — 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they kaew you." 

In fine, not only his passional lyrics, but all the 
poems relating to the wedded love in which his own 
deepest instincts were thoroughly gratified, are the 
most strong and simple portion of his verse, — show- 



Robert Browning. 65 

ing that luminous expression is still the product of 
high emotion, as some conceive the diamond to 
^ave been crystallized by the electric shock. 

VII. 

Many of the lyrics in the volume of 1864* are so 
thin and faulty, and so fail to carry out the author's 
intent, — the one great failure in art, — as sadly to 
illustrate the progressive ills which attend upon a 
wrong method. 

The gift still remained, however, for no work dis- 
plays more of ill-diffused power and swift applica- 
tion than Browning's longest poem, The Ring and 
the Book. It has been succeeded rapidly, within 
five years, by other works, — the whole almost 
equalling, in bulk, the entire volume of his former 
writings. Their special quality is affluence : limit- 
less wealth of language and illustration. They 
abound in the material of poetry. A poet should 
condense from such star-dust the orbs which give 
light and outlast time. As in " Sordello," Browning 
* ''Dramatis Fersonce." 



66 Robert Broivning. 

again fails to do this ; he gives us his first draught, 
— the huge, outlined block, yet to be reduced to fit 
proportions, — the painter's sketch, blotchy and too 
obscure, and of late without the early freshness. 

Nevertheless, " The Ring and the Book " is a 
wonderful production, the extreme of realistic art, 
and considered, not without reason, by the poet's 
admirers, to be his greatest work. To review it 
would require a special chapter, and I have said 
enough with respect to the author's style in my cita- 
tion of his less extended poems ; but as the product 
of sheer intellect this surpasses them all. It is the 
story of a tragedy which took place at Rome one 
hundred and seventy years ago. The poet seems 
to have found his thesis in an old book, — part print, 
part manuscript, — bought for eight pence at a Flo- 
rence stall : — 

" A book in shape, but, really, pure crude fact 
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, 
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since." 

The versified narrative of the child Pampilia's sale 
to Count Guido, of his cruelty and violence, of her 



Robert Browning. 67 

rescue by a young priest, — the pursuit, the lawful 
separation, the murder by Guido of the girl and her 
putative parents, the trial and condemnation of the 
murderer, and the affirmation of his sentence by the 
Pope, — all this is made to fill out a poem of twenty- 
one thousand lines ; but these include ten different 
versions of the same tale, besides the poet's prelude, 
— in which latter he gives a general outline of it, so 
that the reader plainly may understand it, and the 
historian then be privileged to wander as he choose. 
The chapters which contain the statements of the 
priest-lover and Pampilia are full of tragic beauty 
and emotion ; the Pope's soliloquy, though too pro- 
longed, is a wonderful piece of literary metempsy- 
chosis ; but the speeches of the opposing lawyers 
carry realism to an intolerable, prosaic extreme. 
Each of these books, possibly, should be read by 
itself, and not too steadily nor too often. Observe 
that the author, in elevated passages, sometimes for- 
gets his usual manner and breaks into the cadences 
of Tennyson's style ; for instance, the apostrophe 
to his dead wife, beginning 



68 Robert Bro7vning. 

" O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
And all a wonder and a wild desire ! " 

But elsewhere he leads the reaction from the art- 
school. His presentations are endless : in his 
architecture the tracery, scroll-work, and multifoil 
bewilder us and divert attention from the main 
design. Yet in presence of the changeful flow of 
his verse, and the facility wherewith he records the 
speculations of his various characters, we are struck 
with wonder. " The Ring and the Book " is thus 
far imaginative, and a rhythmical marvel, but is it a 
stronghold of poetic art ? As a whole, we cannot 
admit that it is ; and yet the thought, the vocab- 
ulary, imagery, the wisdom,lavished upon this story, 
would equip a score of ordinary writers, and place 
them beyond danger of neglect. 

Balaustion s Adventure, the poet's next volume, 
displays a tranquil beauty uncommon in his verse, 
and it seems as if besought, after his most prolonged 
effort, to refresh his mind with the sweetness and 
repose of Greek art. He treads decently and rever- 
ently in the buskins of Euripides, and forgets to be 



Robert Browning. 69 

garrulous in his chaste semi-translation of the Alces- 
tis. The girl Balaustion's prelude and conclusion 
are very neatly turned, reminding us of Lander ; 
nor does the book, as a whole, lack the antique 
flavor and the blue, laughing freshness of the Trin- 
acrian sea. 

What shall be said of Fifine at the Fair, or of 
that volume, the last but one of Browning's essays, 
which not long ago succeeded it ? Certainly, that 
they exhibit his steadfast tendency to produce work 
that is less and less poetical. There is no harder 
reading than the first of these poems ; no more 
badly chosen, rudely handled measure than the 
verse selected for it ; no pretentious work, from so 
great a pen, has less of the spirit of grace and 
comeliness. It is a pity that the author has not 
somewhat accustomed himself to write in prose, for 
he insists upon recording all of his thoughts, and 
many of them are essentially prosaic. Strength and 
subtilty are not enough in art : beauty, either of 
the fair, the terrible, or the grotesque, is its justifi- 
cation, and a poem that repels at the outset has 



7o Robert Browning. 

small excuse for being. " Prince Hohenstiel-Schwan- 
gau, Savior of Society," is another of Browning's 
experiments in vivisection, the subject readily made 
out to be the late Emperor of the French. It is 
longer than " Bishop Blougram's Apology," but 
compare it therewith, and we are forced to perceive 
a decline in terseness, virility, and true imaginative 
power. 

Red Coito7i Night-Cap Country; or^ Turf and 
Toiuers^ — what exasperating titles Browning puts 
forth ! this time under the protection of Miss Thack- 
eray. That the habit is inbred, however,* is proved 
by some absurd invention whenever it becomes 
necessary to coin a proper name. After " Blup- 
hocks" and "Gigadibs," we have no right to com- 
plain of the title of his Breton romance. The 
poem itself contains a melo-dramatic story, and 
hence is less uninteresting than " Fifine." But to 
have such a volume, after Browning's finer works, 
come out with each revolving year, is enough to ex- 
tort from his warmest admirers the cry of " Words ! 
Words! Words!" Much of the detail is paltry, 



Robert Browning. 7r 

and altogether local or temporal, so that it will be- 
come inexplicable fifty years hence. There is a 
constant '' dropping into " prose ; moreover, whole 
pages of wandering nonsense are called forth by 
some word, like "night-cap " or "fiddle," taken for 
a text, as if to show the poet's mastery of verse- 
building and how contemptible he can make it. Once 
he would have put the narrative of this poem into a 
brief dramatic sketch that would have had beauty 
and interest. " My Last Duchess " is a more 
genuine addition to literature than the two hundred 
pages of this tedious and affected romance. A pro- 
longed career has not been of advantage to the 
reputation of Browning : his tree was well-rooted 
and reached a sturdy growth, but the yield is too 
profuse, of a fruit that still grows sourer from year 
to year. 

Nevertheless, this poet, like all men of genius, has 
happy seasons in which, by some remarkable per- 
formance, he seems to renew his prime. Aristopha- 
nes' Apology continues the charm of " Balaustion's 
Adventure," to which poem it is a sequel. What I 



72 Robert Brownmg. 

have said of the classical purity and sweetness of 
the earlier production will apply to portions of " the 
last adventure of Balaustion," — which also includes 
" a transcript from Euripides." Besides, it displays 
the richness of scholarship, command of learned 
details, skill in sophistry and analysis, power to re- 
call, awaken, and dramatically inform the historic 
past, in all which qualifications this master still 
remains unequalled by any modern writer, even by 
the most gifted and affluent pupil of his own impres- 
sive school. 

VIII. 

A fair estimate of Browning may, I think, be de- 
duced from the foregoing review of his career. It 
is hard to speak of one whose verse is a metrical 
paradox. I have called him the most original and 
the most unequal of living poets ; he continually 
descends to a prosaic level, but at times is elevated 
to the Laureate's highest flights. Without realizing 
the proper function of art, he nevertheless sympa- 
thizes with the joyous liberty of its devotees ; his 



Robert Brownifig, 73 

life may be conventional, but he never forgets the 
Latin Quarter, and often celebrates that freedom in 
love and song which is the soul of Beranger's 

" Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans." 

then, too, what working man of letters does not 
thank him when he says, — 

"But you are of the trade, my Puccio ! 
You have the fellow-craftsman's sympathy. 
There's none knows like a fellow of the craft 
The all unestimated sum of pains 
That go to a success the world can see. " 

He is an eclectic, and will not be restricted in his 
themes ; on the other hand, he gives us too gross a 
mixture of poetry, fact, and metaphysics, appearing 
to have no sense of composite harmony, but to revel 
in arabesque strangeness and confusion. He has a 
barbaric sense of color and lack of form. Striving 
against the trammels of verse, he really is far less a 
master of expression than others who make less 
resistance. We read in " Pippa Passes ": " If there 
should arise a new painter, will it not be in some 



74 Robert B roaming. 

such way by a poet, now, or a musician (spirits who 
have conceived and perfected an Ideal through some 
other channel), transferring it to this, and escaping 
our conventional roads by pure ignorance of them ?" 
This is the Pre-Raphaelite idea, and, so far, good ; 
but Browning's fault is that, if he has '* conceived," 
he certainly has made no effort to "perfect" an 
Ideal. 

And here I wish to say, — and this is something 
which, soon or late, every thoughtful poet must dis- 
cover, — that the structural exigencies of art, if one 
adapts his genius to them, have a beneficent reac- 
tion upon the artist's original design. By some 
friendly law they help the work to higher excellence, 
suggesting unthought-of touches, and refracting, so 
to speak, the single beam of light in rays of varied 
and delightful beauty. 

The brakes which art applies to the poet's move- 
ment not only regulate, but strengthen its progress. 
Their absence is painfully evinced by the mass of 
Browning's unread verse. Works like " Sordello " 
and"Fifine," however intellectual, seem, like the 



Robert Browning . 75 

removal of the Malvern Hills, a melancholy waste 
of human power. When some romance like the 
last-named comes from his j^en, — an addition in 
volume, not in quality, to what he has done before, 

— I feel a sadness like that engendered among hun- 
dreds of gloomy folios in some black-letter alcove : 
books, forever closed, over which the mighty monks 
of old wore out their lives, debating minute points 
of casuistic theology, though now the very memory 
of their discussions has passed away. Would that 
Browning might take to heart his own words, 
addressed, in " Transcendentalism," to a brother- 
poet : — 

" Song's our art : 
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts 
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. 

— True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up ! 
But why such long prolusion and display, 

Such turning and adjustment of the harp ? 

But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think ; 

Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse : 

Boys seek for images and melody, 

Men must have reason, — so you aim at men. 

Quite otherwise !" 



76 Robert Browning. 

Incidentally we have noted the distinction be- 
tween the drama of Browning and that of the abso- 
lute kind, observing that his characters reflect his 
own mental traits, and that their action and emotion 
are of small moment compared with the speculations 
to which he makes them all give voice. / Still, he 
has dramatic insight, and a minute power of reading 
other men's hearts. His moral sentiment has a 
• potent and subtile quality : — through his early poems 
he really founded a school, and had imitators, and 
although of his later method there are none, the 
younger poets whom he has most affected very 
naturally began work by carrying his philosophy to 
a startling yet perfectly logical extreme. 

Much of his poetry is either very great or very 
poor. It has been compared to Wagner's music, 
and entitled the "poetry of the future ;" but if this 
be just, then we must revise our conception of what 
poetry really is. The doubter incurs the contempt- 
uous enmity of two classes of the dramatist's 
admirers : first, of the metaphysical, who disregard 
considerations of passion, melody, and form ; 



Robert Browning. 



77 



secondly, of those who are sensitive to their mas- 
ter's failings, but, in view of his greatness, make it 
a point of honor to defend them. That greatness 
lies in his originality ; his error, arising from per- 
verseness or congenital defect, is the violation of 
natural and beautiful laws. This renders his longer 
poems of less worth than his lyrical studies, while, 
through avoidance of it, productions, differing as 
widely as " The Eve of St. Agnes," and '' In Mem- 
oriam," will outlive '' The Ring and the Book." In 
writing of Arnold I cited his own quotation of 
Goethe's distinction between the dilettanti, who 
affect genius and despise art, and those who respect 
their calling though not gifted with high creative 
power. Browning escapes the limitations of the 
latter class, but incurs the reproach visited upon 
the former ; and by his contempt of beauty, or 
inability to surely express it, fails of that union of 
art and spiritual power which always characterizes 
a poet entirely great. 



CAVALIER TUNES. 



I. — MARCHING ALONG. 
I. 

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 

Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing : 

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, 

Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

II. 

God for King Charles ! Pym and such carles 

To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous 

paries ! 
Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup, 
Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup 
Till you're {Chorus) viarching along ^ fifty-score strong, 
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

78 



Cavalier Times. 79 

III. 

Hampden to Hell, and his obsequies' knell 
Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well ! 
England, good cheer ! Rupert is near ! 
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here 

{C/io.) Alan king alotig, fifty ■sco7-e strongs 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song ? 

IV. 

Then, God for King Charles ! Pym and his snarls 
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles ! 
Hold by the right, you double your might ; 
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, 

{Cho.) March 7ue along, Jifty-score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song! 

II. GIVE A ROUSE. 

I. 

•King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now ? 
Give a rouse : here's, in Hell's despite now, 
King Charles ' 



8o Cavalier Tunes. 

II. 

Who gave me the goods that went since ? 
Who raised me the house that sank once ? 
W^ho helped me to gold I spent since ? 
Who found me in wine you drank once ? 

{Cho^ King Chaj-les, and who lido him right now? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for Jight now? 
Give a rouse : here' s in Hell's despite 7i07u. 
King Charles ! 



III. 



To whom used my boy George quaff else, 
By the old fool's side that begot him ? 
For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 
While Noll's damned troopers shot him ? 



{Cho.) King Charles, and whd II do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse : heirs in Hells despite now. 
King Charles / 



Cavalier l\ines. 8i 

III. — BOOT AND SADDLE. 



Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
Rescue my Castle, before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, 

{Cho.^ Boot, saddle, to horse, and aivay / 



Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say ; 
Many's the friend there will listen and pray 
God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay, 

{Cho.) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 



HI. 

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay. 

Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundhead's array : 

Who laughs, " Good fellows are these by my fay, 

{Cho.) Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ? 



82 Cavalier Tunes. 

IV. 

Who ? My wife Gertrude ; that honest and gay, 
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, " Nay ! 
I've better counsellors ; what counsel they? 

{Cho.) '' Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!'* 



" HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 
FROM GHENT TO AIX." 

[i6-.] 



I sprang to the stirrup, and Jorls, and he ; 

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 

" Good speed ! " cried the watch, as the gate-bolts 

undrew ; 
" Speed ! " echoed the wall to us galloping through ; 
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 



II. 

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace 
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our 
place ; 

83 



84 From Ghe7it to Aix. 

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique 

right, 
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit. 
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 

III. 

'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near 
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ; 
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ; 
At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be ; 
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the 

half-chime, 
So Joris broke silence with, '' Yet there is time ! " 

IV. 

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 
And against him the cattle stood black every one, 
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, 
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 
With resolute shoulders, each butting away 
The haze, 'as some bluff river headland its spray. 



From Ghent to Aix. 85 

V. 

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent 

back 
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his 

track ; 
And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance 
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance ! 
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and 

anon 
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 

VI. 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, *' Stay 

spur ! 
" Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
" We'll remember at Aix " — for one heard the quick 

wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering 

knees, 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 



S6 From Ghent to Aix. 



VII. 



So we were left galloping, Joris and I, 
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; 
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like 

chaff ; 
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, 
And " Gallop," gasped Joris, '' for Aix is in sight ! " 

VIII. 

" How they'll greet us!" — and all in a moment 

his roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her 

fate. 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 

IX. 

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall. 
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 



From Ghent to Aix. 87 

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without 

peer ; 
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, 

bad or good, 
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 

X. 

And all I remember is, friends flocking round 

As I sate with his head 'twixt my knees on the 

ground. 
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine. 
As I poured down his throat our last measure of 

wine. 
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 
Was no more than his due who brought good news 

from Ghent. 



MULEYKEH. 

If a stranger passed the tent of Hoseyn, he cried 

'' A churl's !" 
Or haply " God help the man who has neither salt 

nor bread ! " 

— "Nay," would a friend exclaim, "he needs nor 

pity nor scorn 
More than who spends small thought on the shore- 
sand, picking pearls, 

— Holds but in light esteem the seed-sort, bears 

instead 
On his breast a moon-like prize, some orb which of 
night makes morn. 

" What if no flocks and herds enrich the son of 

Sinan ? 
They went when his tribe was mulct, ten thousand 

camels the due, 
Blood- value paid perforce for a murder done of old. 



Mule'ykeh. 89 

' God gave them, let them go ! But never since 

time began, 
Muleykeh, peerless mare, owned master the match 

of you, 
And you are my prize, my Pearl : I laugh at men's 

land and gold !' 

" So in the pride of his soul laughs Hoseyn — and 

right, I say. 
Do the ten steeds run a race of glory ? Outstripping 

all. 
Ever Muleykeh stands first steed at the victor's staff. 
Who started, the owner's hope, gets shamed and 

named, that day, 
'Silence,' or, last but one, 'The Cuffed,' as we use 

to call 
Whom the paddock's lord thrusts forth. Right, 

Hoseyn, I say, to laugh." 

"Boasts he Muleykeh the Pearl?" the stranger 

replies : '' Be sure 
On him I waste nor scorn nor pity, but lavish both 



90 Mul^ykeh. 

On Duhl the son of Sheyban, who withers away in 

heart 
For envy of Hoseyn's luck. Such sickness admits 

no cure. 
A certain poet has sung, and sealed the same with 

an oath, 
* For the vulgar — flocks and herds I The Pearl is 

a prize apart.' " 



Lo, Duhl the son of Sheyban comes riding to 

Hoseyn's tent, 
And he casts his saddle down, and enters and 

" Peace " bids he. 
" You are poor, I know the cause : my plenty shall 

mend the wrong. 
'Tis said of your Pearl — the price of a hundred 

camels spent 
In her purchase were scarce ill paid : such prudence 

is far from me 
Who proffer a thousand. Speak ! Long parley may 
* last too long." 



Muleykeh. 91 

Said Hoseyn " You feed young beasts a many, of 

famous breed, 
Slit-eared, unblemished, fat, true offspring of Miizen- 

nem : 
There stumbles no weak-eyed she in the line as it 

climbs the hill. 
But I love Muleykeh's face : her forefront whitens 

indeed 
Like a yelloAvish wave's cream-crest. Your camels 

— go gaze on them ! 
Her fetlock is foam-splashed too. Myself am the 

richer still." 



A year goes by : lo, back to the tent again rides 

Duhl. 
"You are open-hearted, ay — moist-handed, a very 

prince. 
Why should I speak of sale ? Be the mare your 

simple gift ! 
My son is pined to death for her beauty : my wife 

prompts * Fool, 



92 Muleykeh. 

Beg for his sake the Pearl ! Be God the rewarder, 

since 
God pays debts seven for one : who squanders on 

Him shows thrift.' " 

Said Hoseyn *' God gives each man one life, like a 
lamp, then gives 

That lamp due measure of oil : lamp lighted — hold 
high, wave wide 

Its comfort for others to share ! once quench it, 
what help is left ? 

The oil of your lamp is your son : I shine while 
Muleykeh lives. 

Would I beg your son to cheer my dark if Muleykeh 
died? 

It is life against life : what good avails to the life- 
bereft ? " 

Another year, and — hist ! What craft is it Duhl 

designs ? 
He alights not at the door of the tent as he did last 

time, 



Muleykeh. 93 

But, creeping behind, he gropes his stealthy way by 
the trench 

Half-round till he finds the flap in the folding, for 
night combines 

With the robber — and such is he : Duhl, covetous 
up to crime, 

Must wring from Hoseyn's grasp the Pearl, by what- 
ever the wrench. 



" He was hunger-bitten, I heard : I tempted with 

half my store. 
And a gibe was all my thanks. Is he generous like 

Spring dew ? 
Account the fault to me who chaffered with such an 

one ! 
He has killed, to feast chance comers, the creature 

he rode : nay, more — 
For a couple of singing-girls his robe has he torn in 

two: 
I will beg ! Yet I nowise gained by the tale of my 

wife and son. 



94 Mide'ykeh. 

" I swear by the Holy House, my head will I never 

wash 
Till I filch his Pearl away. Fair dealing I tried, 

then guile, 
And now I resort to force. He said we must live 

or die : 
Let him die, then, — let me live ! Be bold — but 

not too rash ! 
I have found me a peeping-place : breast, bury your 

breathing while 
I explore for myself ! Now breathe ! He deceived 

me not, the spy ! 



"As he said — there lies in peace Hoseyn — how 
happy ! Beside 

Stands tethered the Pearl : thrice winds her head- 
stall about his wrist : 

'Tis therefore he sleeps so sound — the moon 
through the roof reveals. 

And, loose on his left, stands too that other, known 
far and wide, 



Mul^ykeh. 95 

Buheyseh, her sister born : fleet is she yet ever missed 
The winning tail's fire-flash a-stream past the 
thunderous heels. 

" No less she stands saddled and bridled, this 

second, in case some thief 
Should enter and seize and fly with the first, as I 

mean to do. 
What then ? The Pearl is the Pearl : once mount 

her we both escape." 
Through the skirt-fold in glides Duhl, — so a serpent 

disturbs no leaf 
In a bush as he parts the twigs entwining a nest : 

clean through. 
He is noiselessly at his work ; as he planned, he 

performs the rape. 

He has set the tent-door wide, has buckled the girth, 

has clipped 
The headstall away from the wrist he leaves thrice 

bound as before, 



g6 Mule'ykeh. 

He springs on the Pearl, is launched on the desert 

like bolt from bow. 
Up starts our plundered man : from his breast 

though the heart be ripped, 
Yet his mind has the mastery : behold, in a minute 

more. 
He is out and off and away on Buheyseh, whose 

worth we know ! 



And Hoseyn — his blood turns flame, he has learned 
long since to ride, 

And Buheyseh does her part, — they gain — they 
are gaining fast 

On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Darraj to 
cross and quit, 

And to reach the ridge El-Saban, — no safety till 
that be spied ! 

And Buheyseh is, bound by bound, but a horse- 
length off at last. 

For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, the 
touch of the bit. 



Mule'ykeh. 97 

She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider the 

strange and queer : 
Buheyseh is mad with hope — beat sister she shall 

and must, 
Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she 

has to thank. 
She is near now, nose by tail — they are neck by 

croup — joy ! fear ! 
What folly makes Hoseyn shout " Dog Duhl, 

Damned son of the Dust, 
Touch the right ear and press with your foot my 

Pearl's left flank !" 



And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muleykeh as 

prompt perceived 
Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him 

was to obey, 
And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished for ever 

more. 
And Hoseyn looked one long last look as who, all 

bereaved, 



98 Mule'ykeh. 

Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living 

may : 
Then he turned Buheyseh's neck slow homeward, 

weeping sore. 

And, lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hoseyn upon the 

ground 
Weeping : and neighbors came, the tribesmen of 

Benu-Asad 
In the vale of green Er-Rass, and they questioned 

him of his grief ; 
And he told from first to last how, serpent-like, 

Duhl had wound 
His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an 

ape, so bad ! 
And how Buheysehdid wonders, yet Pearl remained 

with the thief. 

And they jeered him, one and all : " Poor Hoseyn is 
crazed past hope ! 

How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in for- 
tune's spite ? 



99 Muleykeh. 

To have simply held the tongue were a task for a 

boy or girl, 
And here were Muleykeh again, the eyed like an 

antelope, 
The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast 

by night ! " — 
"And the beaten in speed ! " wept Hoseyn : " You 

never have loved my Pearl." 



INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. 

I. 

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon : 

A mile or so away 
On a little mound, Napoleon 

Stood on our storming-day ; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 

Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 

II. 

Just as perhaps he mused " My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall, 
Let once my army leader Lannes 

AVaver at yonder wall," — 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 

lOO 



Incident of the French Camp, loi 

Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew 
Until he reached the mound. 

III. 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy : 

You hardly could suspect — 
(So tight he kept his lips compressed, 

Scarce any blood came thro') 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast 

Was all but shot in two. 

IV. 

" Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal's in the market-place, 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans 

Where I to heart's desire, 
" Perched him !" The Chief's eye flashed ; his 
plans 

Soared up again like fire. 



I02 Incident of the French Camp. 

V. 

The Chief's eye flashed ; but presently 

Softened itself, as sheathes 
A film the mother eagle's eye 

When her bruised eaglet breathes : 
" You're wounded! " " Nay," his soldier's pride 

Touched to the quick, he said : 
" I'm killed, Sire ! " And, his chief beside, 

Smiling the boy fell dead. 



HERVE RIEL. 

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 

ninety-two, 
Did the EngHsh fight the French, — woe to France! 
And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through 

the blue, 
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of 

sharks pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the 

Ranee, 
With the English fleet in view. 

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in 

full chase ; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 

Damfreville ; 

Close on him fled, great and small. 

Twenty-two good ships in all ; 
103 



104 Herve Rid. 

And they signalled to the place, 

" Help the winners of a race ! 
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick ; or, 
quicker still, 

Here's the English can and will !" 



Then the pilots of the place put out brisk, and 
leaped on board, 
" Why, what hope or chance have ships like these 
to pass ?" laughed they : 
" Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 
scarred and scored. 
Shall the * Formidable ' here with her twelve and 
eighty guns 
Think to make the river-mouth by the single nar- 
row way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of 

twenty tons. 
And with flow at full beside ? 
Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
Reach the mooring ? rather say, 



Herve Riel. 105 

While rock stands, or water runs, 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 

Then was called a council straight : 

Brief and bitter the debate. 
" Here's the English at our heels : would you have 
them take in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern 
and bow, 
For a prize to Plymouth sound ? 
Better run the ships aground ! " 

(Ended Damfreville his speech.) 
" Not a minute more to wait ! 
Let the captains all and each 
Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the 
beach ! 
France must undergo her fate." 

'' Give the word !" But no such word 

Was ever spoke or heard : 
For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck, amid 
all these, — 



io6 Hervc Riel. 

A captain ? a lieutenant ? a mate, — first, second, 
third ? 
No such man of mark, and meet 

With his betters to compete ! 
But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for 
the fleet, . 
A poor coasting-pilot he, — Herve Riel the 
Croisickese. 



And " What mockery or malice have we here ?" 
cries Herve Riel, 
Are you mad, you Malouins ? Are you cowards, 
fools, or rogues ? 
Talk to me of rocks and shoals ? — me, who took the 
soundings, tell 
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every 
swell, 
'Twixt the offing here and Greve, where the river 
disembogues ? 
Are you bought by English gold ? Is it love the 
lying's for ? 



Herv^ Riel. 107 

Morn and eve, night and day, 

Have I piloted your bay, 
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of 
Solidor. 
Burn the fleet, and ruin France ? That were 

worse than fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, beHeve 
me, there's a way ! 
Only let me lead the line. 

Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this ' Formidable ' clear, 
Make the others follow mine. 
And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I 

know well, 
Right to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound ; 
And if one ship misbehave, — 

Keel so much as grate the ground, — 
Why, I've nothing but my life : here's my head ! " 
cries Herve Riel. 



io8 Herve Riel. 

Not a minute more to wait. 
'* Steer us in, small and great ! 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squad- 
ron ! " cried its chief. 
Captains, give the sailor place ! 

He is admiral, in brief. 
Still the north wind, by God's grace. 
See the noble fellow's face. 
As the big ship, with a bound, 
Clears the entry like a hound. 

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 
sea's profound ! 

See, safe through shoal and rock, 

How they follow in a flock ! 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates 
the ground. 

Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past ! 
All are harbored to the last ! 
And, just as Herve Riel hollas " Anchor !" sure as 

fate, 
Up the English come, — too late ! 



Herve Riel. 109 

So the storm subsides to calm : 

They see the green trees wave 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve ; 
Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 
" Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay, 
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 

As they cannonade away ! 
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the 

Ranee ! " 
How hope succeeds despair on each captain's coun- 
tenance ! 
Outburst all with one accord, 

" This is paradise for hell ! 

Let France, let France's king, 

Thank the man that did the thing ! " 
What a shout, and all one word, 

" Herve Riel ! " 
As he stepped in front once more ; 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, — 
Just the same man as before. 



no Hervi Riel. 

Then said Damfreville, " My friend, 
I must speak out at the end, 

Though I find the speaking hard ; 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 
You have saved the king his ships ; 

You must name your own reward. 
'Faith, our sun was near edipse ! 
Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 
Ask to heart's content, and have ! or my name's 
not Damfreville." 

Then a beam of fun outbroke 

On the bearded mouth that spoke, 

As the honest heart laughed through 

Those frank eyes of Breton blue : — 

" Since I needs must say my say ; 

Since on board the duty's done ; 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point what is it 

but a run ? 
Since 'tis ask and have, I may ; 
Since the others go ashore, — 



Hervc Riel. 1 1 1 

Come ! A good whole holiday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the 

Belle Aiirore ? " 
That he asked, and that he got, — nothing more. 

Name and deed alike are lost : 
Not a pillar nor a post 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 
On a single fishing-smack [wrack 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 

All that France saved from the fight whence 
England bore the bell. 
Go to Paris ; rank on rank. 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Louvre, face and flank : 

You shall look long enough ere you come to 
Herve Riel. 
So for better and for worse, 
Herve Riel, accept my verse ! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the 
Belle Aurore ! 



HALBERT AND HOB. 

Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts 

whelped, for den, 
In a wild part of North England, there lived once 

two wild men 
Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut. 
Time out of mind their birthright : father and son, 

these — but — 
Such a son, such a father ! Most wildness by degrees 
Softens away : yet last of their line, the wildest and 

worst were these. 

Criminals, then ? Why, no : they did not murder 

and rob. 
But, give them a word, they returned a blow — old 

Halbert as young Hob : 
Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed, 
Hated or feared the more — who knows ? — the 

genuine wild-beast breed. 

H2 



Halbert a7id Hob, 113 

Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the 

country-side ; 
But how fared each with other ? E'en beasts couch, 

hide by hide, 
In a growling, grudged agreement : so, father and 

son lay curled 
The closelier up in their den because the last of 

their kind in the world. 



Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas 

night of snow, 
Came father and son to words — such words ! more 

cruel because the blow 
To crown each word was wanting, while taunt 

matched gibe, and curse 
Competed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell, 

— nay, worse : 
For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at 

last 
The son at the throat of the father, seized him and 

held him fast. 

8 



114 Halbe?'t and Hob. 

^' Out of this house you go ! " — (there followed a 

hideous oath) — 
" This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us 

both ! 
If there's snow outside, there's coolness : out with 

you, bide a spell 
In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a 

parish shell ! " 

Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump 

of oak 
Untouched at the core by a thousand years : much 

less had its seventy broke 
One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck 

to shoulder-blade 
Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash 

hand like a feather weighed. 

Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his 

eyes. 
Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand 

stiffened — arms and thighs 



Halbert and Hob. 115 

All of a piece — struck mute, much as a sentry 

stands, 
Patient to take the enemy's fire : his captain so 

commands. 



Whereat the son's wrath fled to fury at such sheer 
scorn 

Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting 
the babe new-born : 

And '' Neither will this turn serve ! " yelled he. 
" Out with you ! Trundle, log ! 

If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all- 
fours like a dog ! " 

Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise, — down 

to floor 
Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from 

hearth to door, — 
Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until 
A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from 

the house-door-sill. 



ii6 Halbert and Hob. 

Then the father opened his eyes — each spark of 

their rage extinct, — 
Temples, late black, dead-blanched, — right-hand 

with left-hand linked, — ■ 
He faced his son submissive ; when slow the accents 

came, 
They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand 

on his neck lay all the same. 

" Halbert, on such a night of a Christm^as long ago, 
For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag 

— so — 
My father down thus far : but, softening here, I 

heard 
A voice in my heart, and stopped : you wait for an 

outer word. 

" For your own sake, not mine, soften you too ! 

Untrod 
Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger 

of God I 



Halbert and Hob. 117 

I dared not pass its lifting : I did well. I nor 

blame 
Nor praise you. I stopped here : Halbert, do you 

the same ! " 



Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's 

throat. 
They mounted, side by side, to the room again : no 

note 
Took either of each, no sign made each to either : 

last 
As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night 

they passed. 



At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same 
place, 

With an outburst blackening still the old bad fight- 
ing-face : 

But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb 
new-yeaned. 



1 1 8 Halbert and Hob. 

When he went to the burial, someone's staff he bor- 
rowed, — tottered and leaned. 

But his lips were loose, not locked, — kept mutter- 
ing, mumbling. " There ! 

At his cursing and swearing ! " the youngsters 
cried : but the elders thought " In prayer." 

A boy threw stones : he picked them up and stored 
them in his vest. 

So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, 

perhaps found rest. 
" Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts ? " 

O Lear, 
That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, 

seems clear ! 



MARTIN RELPH. 

My grandfather says he remembers he saw 7vhen a 

youngster lorig agOy 
On a bright May day^ a stra?tge old man with a beard 

as white as snow. 
Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument 

of woe^ 
And striki?ig his bare bald head the while, sob out 

the reason — so I 



If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never forgive 

myself : 
But — God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin 

Relph, 
As coward, coward I call him — him, yes, him ! 

Away from me ! 

Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I 

used to be ! 

119 



I20 Martin Relph. 

What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, 

all eyes, no tongue ? 
People have urged " You visit a scare too hard on a 

lad so young ! 
You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, " no 

time to regain your wits : 
Besides it had maybe cost you life." Ay, there is the 

cap which fits ! 

So, cap me, the coward, — thus ! No fear ! A cuff 

on the brow does good : 
The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at 

the brain for food. 
See now, here certainly seems excuse : for a 

moment, I trust, dear friends. 
The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, 

I have made amends ! 

For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, 

here stand I, 
Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish 

the reason why. 



Martin Relph. 121 

When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No 

fool, friends, since the bite 
Of a worm inside is worse to bear : pray God I have 

baulked him quite ! 

I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse ! It came of the 

way they cooped 
Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling 

because tight-hooped 
By the red-coats round us villagers all : they meant 

we should see the sight 
And take the example, — see, not speak, for speech 

was the Captain's right. 

"You clowns on the slope, beware !" cried he: 

" This woman about to die 
Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance 

as play the spy. 
Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above 

them perhaps will learn 
That peasants should stick to their plough-tail, 

leave to the King the King's concern. 



122 Martin Relph. 

" Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between 
King George and his foes : 

What call has a man of your kind — much less, a 
woman — to interpose ? 

Yet you needs must be meddling, folks like you, 
not foes — • so much the worse ! 

The many and loyal should keep themselves unmix- 
ed with the few perverse. 

" Is the counsel hard to follow ! I gave it you plain- 
ly a month ago, 

And where was the good ? The rebels have learned 
just all that they need to know. 

Not a month since in we quietly marched : a week, 
and they had the news, 

From a list complete of our rank and file to a note 
of our caps and shoes. 

" All about all we did and all we were doing and 

like to do ! 
Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who 

wrote it, too. 



Martifi Relph. 123 

Some of you men look black enough, but the milk- 
white face demure 

Betokens the finger foul with ink : 'tis a woman 
who writes, be sure ! 

*' Is it ' Dearie, how much I miss your mouth ! ' — 

good natural stuff, she pens ? 
Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course : with 

talk about cocks and hens. 
How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our 

creeper which came to grief 
Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round 

casement in famous leaf.' 

*' But all for a blind! she soon glides frank into 
* Horrid the place is grown 

With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we 
may call our own : 

And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and 
lodging will be to seek 

For the second Company sure to come ( 'tis whis- 
pered) on Monday week.' 



124 Martin Rclph. 

" And so to the end of the chapter ! There ! The 
murder, you see, was out : 

Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels 
was brought about ! 

Safe in the trap w^ould they now lie snug, had treach- 
ery made no sign : 

But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools 
malign ! ^ 

" That traitors had played us false, was proved — 

sent news which fell so pat : 
And the murder was out — this letter of love, the 

sender of this sent that ! 
'T is an ugly job, though, all the same — a hateful, 

to have to deal 
With a case of this kind, when a woman's in fault ; 

we soldiers need nerves of steel ! 

" So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a 

message to Vincent Parkes 
Whom she wrote to ; easy to find he was, since one 

of the King's own clerks, 



Martin Relph. 125 

Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close 

by where the rebels camp : 
A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort — • 

the scamp ! 

" ' If her writing is simple and honest and only the 

lover-like stuff it looks, 
And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the 

rebels' books. 
Come quick, ' said I, ' and in person prove you are 

each of you clear of crime, 
Or martial law must take its course : this day next 

week's the time ! ' 

*' Next week is now : does he come ? Not he ! Clean 

gone, our clerk, in a trice ! 
He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch : no 

need of a warning twice ! 
His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the 

noose still, here she stands 
To pay for her fault. ' T is an ugly job : but soldiers 

obey commands. 



126 Martin Rdph. 

" And hearken wherefore I make a speech ! Should 
any acquaintance share 

The folly that led to the fault that is now to be pun- 
ished, let fools beware ! 

Look black, if you please, but keep hands white : 
and, above all else, keep wives — 

Or sweethearts or what they may be — from ink ! 
Not a word now, on your lives ! " 

Black ? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the 

Captain's face — the brute 
With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the 

blood-shot eyes to suit ! 
He was muddled with wine, they say : more like, he 

was out of his wits with fear ; 
He had but a handful of men, that's true, — a riot 

might cost him dear. 

And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pin- 
ioned arms and face 

Bandaged about, on the turf marked o<it for the 
party's firing-place. 



Martin Relph. 127 

I hope she was wholly with God : I hope 'twas His 

angel stretched a hand 
To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in 

our church-aisle stand. 

I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage 
to vex her eyes. 

No face within which she missed without, no ques- 
tions and no replies — 

" Why did you leave me to die ? " — " Because ..." 
Oh, fiends, too soon you grin 

At merely a moment of hell, like that — such heaven 
as hell ended in ! 

Let mine end too ! He gave the word, up went the 

guns in a line : 
Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb, — for, 

of all eyes, only mine 
Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some 

fell on their knees in prayer. 
Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a 

sole exception there. 



128 Martin Relph. 

That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled 
behind the group : 

I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed 
while the others stoop ! 

From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tight- 
ened : / touch ground ? 

No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fet- 
ters rust around ! 

Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst — aught 

else but see, see, only see ? 
And see I do — for there comes in sight — a man, it 

sure must be ! — 
Who staggeringly, stumblingly, rises, falls, rises, at 

random flings his weight 
On and on, anyhow onward — a man that's mad he 

arrives too late ! 

Else why does he wave a something white high-flour- 
ished above his head ? 

Why does not he call, cry, — curse the fool ! — why 
throw up his arms instead ? 



Martin Relph. 129 

O take this fist in your own face, fool ! Why does not 

yourself shout '' Stay ! 
Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with 

something he's mad to say ? " 

And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil 

up in your brain, 
And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven, 

— time's over, repentance vain ! 
They level : a volley, a smoke and the clearing of 

smoke : I see no more 
Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the 

something white he bore. 

But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an 
object. Surely dumb, 

Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not 
one of us saw him come ! 

Has he fainted through fright ? One may well be- 
lieve ! What is that he holds so fast ? 

Turn him over, examine the face ! Heyday ! 
What ! Vincent Parkes at last 1 



130 Marti7i Relph. 

Dead ! dead as she; by the self-same shot : one bul- 
let has ended both, 

Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh 
at our plighted troth. 

" Till death us do part ? " Till death us do join past 
parting — that sounds like 

Betrothal indeed ! O Vincent Parkes, what need has 
my fist to strike ? 

I helped you : thus were you dead and wed : one 

bound, and your soul reached hers ! 
There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, 

sealed, the paper which plain avers 
She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the 

King's Arms broad engraved : 
No one can hear, but if anyone high on the hill can 

see, she's saved ! 

And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart- 
break, — plain it grew 

How the week's delay had been brought about : each 
guess at the end proved true. 



Martin Relph. 131 

It was hard to get at the folks in power : such waste 

of time ! and then 
Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his 

lamb in the lion's den ! 

And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no 

end to the stupid forms — 
The license and leave : I make no doubt — what 

wonder if passion warms 
The pulse in a man if you play with his heart ? — he 

was something hasty in speech ; 
Anyhow, none would quicken the work : he had to 

beseech, beseech ! 

And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp, 

— what followed but fresh delays ? 
For the floods were out, he was forced to take such 

a roundabout of ways ! 
And 'twas "Halt there ! " at every turn of the road, 

since he had to cross the thick 
Of the red-coats : what did they care for him and his 

" Quick, for God's sake, quick ! " 



132 Martin Relpli, 

Horse ? but he had one : had it how long ? till the 

first knave smirked " You brag 
Yourself a friend of the King's ? then lend to a 

King's friend here your nag ! " 
Money to buy another ? Why, piece by piece they 

plundered him still 
With their " Wait you must, — no help : if aught can 

help you, a guinea will ! " 

And a borough there was — I forget the name — 
whose Mayor must have the bench 

Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt : for " Vincent," 
thinks he, sounds French ! 

It well may have driven him daft, God knows ! all 
man can certainly know 

Is — rushing and falling and rising, at last he arriv- 
ed in a horror — so ! 

When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both ! 

Ay, bite me ! The worm-begins 
At his work once more. Had cowardice proved — 

that only — my sin of sins ! 



Martin Relph. 133 

Friends, look you here ! Suppose . . . suppose . . . 

But mad I am, needs must be ! 
Judas the Damned would never have dared such a 

sin as I dream ! For, see ! 

Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my 

wretched self, and dreamed 
In the heart of me "She were better dead than 

happy and his ! " — while gleamed 
A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest 

embrace, 
He the saviour and she the saved, — -bliss born of 

the very murder-place ! 

No ! Say I was scared, friends ! Call me fool and 

coward, but nothing worse ! 
Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward ! 'Twas 

ever the coward's curse 
That fear breeds fancies in such : such take their 

shadow for substance still, 
— A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes, — 

loved Vincent, if you will ! 



134 Martt?i Relph. 

And her — why, I said "Good morrow" to her, 

" Good even," and nothing more : 
The neighborly way ! She was just to me as fifty 

had been before. 
So coward it is and coward shall be ! There's a 

friend, now ! Thanks ! A drink 
Of water I wanted : and now I can walk, get home 

by myself, I think. 



THE LOST LEADER. 

I. 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 

So much was their's who so little allowed : 
How all our copper had gone for his service ! 
Rags — were they purple, his heart had been 
proud ! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored 
him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye. 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to like and to die ! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from 
their graves ! 

135 



136 The Lost Leader. 

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 

II. 
We shall march prospering, — not thro' his presence ; 

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre ; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire : 
Blot out his name, then, — record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more footpath 
untrod. 
One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels, 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 

There would be doubt, hesitation and pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him, — strike gal- 
lantly, 

Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own ; 
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, 

Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne ! 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN ; 

A CHILD'S SrORY. 
(written for, and inscribed to, w. m. the younger.) 

I. 
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick, 
By famous Hanover city ; 

The river Weser, deep and wide, 
Washes its wall on the southern side ; 
A pleasanter spot you never spied ; 
But, when begins my ditty, 

Almost live hundred years ago, 
To see the townsfolk suffer so 
From vermin, was a pity. 
II. 
Rats! 
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, 

And bit the babies in the cradles. 
And ate the cheeses out of the vats. 

And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles, 
137 



138 The Pied Piper of Havielin. 

Split open the kegs of salted sprats, 
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, 
And even spoiled the women's chats, 

By drowning their speaking 

With shrieking and squeaking 
In fifty different sharps and flats. 

III. 
At last the people in a body 

To the Town Hall came flocking : 
" 'Tis clear," cried they, " our Mayor's a noddy ; 

And as for our Corporation — shocking 
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 
For dolts that can't or won't determine 
What's best to rid us of our vermin ? 
You hope, because you're old and obese. 
To find in the furry civic robe ease ? 
Rouse up. Sirs ! Give your brains a racking 
To find the remedy we're lacking. 
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing ! " 
At this the Mayor and Corporation 
Quaked with mighty consternation. 



The Ficd Piper of Hamclin. 139 

IV, 

An hour they sate in counsel, 
At length the Mayor broke silence ; 

" For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell : 
I wish I were a mile hence ! 

It's easy to bid one rack one's brain ! 

I'm sure my poor head aches again 

I've scratched it so, and all in vain. 

Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap ! " 

Just as he said this, what should hap 

At the chamber door but a gentle tap ? 

"Bless us," cried the Mayor, " What's that? " 

(With the Corporation as he sat, 

Looking Uttle though wondrous fat ; 

Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister 

Than a too-long-opened oyster, 

Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 

For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) 

" Only a scraping of shoes on the mat ? 

Anything like the sound of a rat 

Makes my heart go pit-a-pat ! " 



I40 The Pied Piper of Havieliit. 

V. 

" Come in ! " — the Mayor cried, looking bigger : 

And in did come the strangest figure ! 

His queer long coat from heel to head 

Was half of yellow and half of red ; 

And he himself was tall and thin, 

With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 

And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, 

No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin. 

But lips where smiles went out and in — 

There was no guessing his kith and kin ! 

And nobody could enough admire 

The tall man and his quaint attire : 

Quoth one : " It's as my great-grandsire, 

Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone. 

Had walked this way from his painted tomb-stone ! " 

VI. 

.He advanced to the council-table : 
And, " Please your honors," said he, " I'm able, 
By means of a secret charm, to draw 
All creatures living beneath the sun, 



The Pied Piper of Haineliti. 141 

That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, 

After me so as you never saw ! 

And I chiefly use my charm 

On creatures that do people harm, 

The mole, and toad, and newt, and viper ; 

And people call me the Pied Piper." 

(And here they noticed round his neck 

A scarf of red and yellow stripe, 

To match with his coat of the self same cheque ; 

And at the scarf's end hung a pipe ; 

And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying 

As if impatient to be playing 

Upon this pipe, as low it dangled 

Over his vesture so old-fangled.) 

" Yet," said he, '' poor piper as I am, 

In Tartary I freed the Cham, 

Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats ; 

I eased in Asia the Nizam 

Of a monstrous brood of vampyre bats : 

And, as for what your brain bewilders, 

If I can rid your town of rats 

Will you give me a thousand guilders ? " 



142 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 

"One ? fifty thousand ! " — was the exclamation 
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. 

VII. 

Into the street the Piper stept, 

Smiling first a little smile, 
As if he knew what magic slept 

In his quiet pipe the while ; 
Then, like a musical adept. 
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, 
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled 
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled ; 
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, 
You heard as if an army muttered ; 
And the muttering grew to a grumbling ; 
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling ; 
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. 
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, 
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, 
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, 

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins. 
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, 



The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 143 

Families by tens and dozens, 
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives — 
Followed the Piper for their lives. 
From street to street he piped advancing, 
And step for step they followed dancing. 
Until they came to the river Weser 
Wherein all plunged and perished 
— Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, 
Swam across and lived to carry 
(As he the manuscript he cherished) 
To Rat-land home his commentary. 
Which was, " At the first shrill note of the pipe, 
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe. 
And putting apples, wondrous ripe. 
Into a cider-press's gripe : 
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, 
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, 
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, 
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks ; 
And it seemed as if a voice 
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery 
Is breathed) called out, Oh rats, rejoice ! 



144 "^^^^ /'/^^ Piper of Hamelin. 

The world is grown to one vast drysaltery ! 
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, 
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon ! 
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, 
All ready staved, like a great sun shone 
Glorious scarce an inch before me, 
Just as methought it said. Come, bore me ! 
— 1 found the Weser rolling o'er me." 

VIII. 

You should have heard the Hamelin people 

Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple ; 

" Go," cried the Mayor, " and get long poles ! 

Poke out the nests and block up the holes ! 

Consult with carpenters and builders, 

And leave in our town not even a trace 

Of the rats !" — when suddenly up the face 

Of the Piper perked in the market-place. 

With a, " First if you please, my thousand guilders !" 

IX. 

A thousand guilders ! The Mayor looked blue ; 
So did the Corporation too. 



The Fied Piper of Haineliti. 145 

For council dinners made rare havoc 

With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock • 

And half the money would replenish 

Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. 

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow 

With a gipsy coat of red and yellow ! 

" Besides," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink, 

" Our business was done at the river's brink ; 

We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, 

And what's dead can't come to life, I think. 

So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink 

From the duty of giving you something for drink, 

And a matter of money to put in your poke ; 

But, as for the guilders, what we spoke 

Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. 

Beside, our losses have made us thrifty ; 

A thousand guilders ! Come, take fifty ! " 

X. 

The piper's face fell, and he cried, 
" No trifling ! I can't wait, beside ! 
I've promised to visit by dinner time 
10 



146 The Pied Piper of Ha7nelin. 

Bagdat, and accept the prime 
Of the Head Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, 
For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen. 
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor — 
With him I proved no bargain-driver, 
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver ! 
And folks who put me in a passion 
May find me pipe to another fashion.'* 

XI. 

" How ?" cried the Mayor, " d'ye think I'll brook 

Being worse treated than a Cook ? 

Insulted by a lazy ribald 

With idle pipe and vesture piebald ? 

You threaten us, fellow ? Do your worst, 

Blow your pipe there till you burst ! " 

XII. 

Once more he stept into the street ; 

And to his lips again 

Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane ; 
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet 



The Pied Piper of Hafnelin. 147 

Soft notes as yet musician's cunning 
Never gave the enraptured air) 
There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling 
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, 
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, 
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, 
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scat- 
tering. 
Out came the children running. 
All the little boys and girls. 
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, 
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, 
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. 

XIII. 

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood 

As if they were changed into blocks of wood, 

Unable to move a step, or cry 

To the children merrily skipping by — 

And could only follow with the eye 

That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. 



148 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 

But how the Mayor was on the rack, 

And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, 

As the Piper turned from the High Street 

To where the Weser rolled its waters 

Right in the way of their sons and daughters ! 

However he turned from South to West, 

And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, 

And after him the children pressed ; 

Great was the joy in every breast. 

" He never can cross that mighty top ! 

He's forced to let the piping drod, 

And we shall see our children stop ! " 

When, lo, as they reached the mountain's side, 

A wondrous portal opened wide, 

As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed ; 

And the Piper advanced and the children followed, 

And when all were in to the very last. 

The door in the mountain side shut fast. 

Did I say all ? No ! One was lame. 

And could not dance cne whole of the way ; 

And in after years, if you would blame 

His sadness, he was used to say, — 



The Pied Piper of Hanielin. 149 

" It's dull in our town since my playmates left ! 

I can't forget that I'm bereft 

Of all the pleasant sights they see, 

Which the Piper also promised me ; 

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land 

Joining the town and just at hand, 

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, 

And flowers put forth a fairer hue, 

And everything was strange and new ; 

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, 

And their dogs outran our fallow deer, 

And honey-bees had lost their stings. 

And horses were born with eagles' wings ; 

And just as I became assured 

My lame foot would be speedily cured, 

The music stopped and I stood still, 

And found myself outside the Hill, 

Left alone against my will, 

To go now Hmping as before. 

And never hear of that country more ! " 



150 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 

XIV. 

Alas, alas for Hamelin ! 

There canie into many a burgher's pate 

A text which says, that Heaven's Gate 

Opes to the Rich at as easy rate 
As the needle's eye takes a camel in ! 
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South 
To offer the Piper by word of mouth, 

Wherever it was men's lot to find him, 
Silver and gold to his heart's content, 
If he'd only return the way he went, 

And bring the children behind him. 
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor. 
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever. 
They made a decree that lawyers never 

Should think their records dated duly 
If, after the day of the month and year, 
These words did not as well appear, 
" And so long after what happened here 

On the Twenty-second of July, 
Thirteen hundred and Seventy-six :" 
And the better in memory to fix 



The Pied Piper of Hamelift. 151 

The place of the Children's last retreat, 
They called it, the Pied Piper's Street — 
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor 
Was sure for the future to lose his labor. 
Nor suffered they Hostelry or Tavern 

To shock with mirth a street so solemn ; 
But opposite the place of the cavern 

They wrote the story on a column, 
And on the Great Church Window painted 
The same, to make the world acquainted 
How their children were stolen away ; 
And there it stands to this very day. 
And I must not omit to say 
That in Transylvania there's a tribe 
Of alien people that ascribe 
The outlandish ways and dress 
On which their neighbors lay such stress, 
To their fathers and mothers having risen 
Out of some subterranean prison 
Into which they were trepanned 
Long time ago in a mighty band 
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, 
But how or why, they don't understand. 



\2 The Pied Piper of Haynelin. 

XV. 

So, Willy, let you and me be wipers 

Of scores out with all men — especially pipers ; 

And whether they pipe us free, from rats or from 

mice, 
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our 

promise. 



HOLY-CROSS DAY. 

On IV kick the Jews were foned to attend an annual Christian 
sennon in Rome. 

[" Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my 
lord preach his first sermon to the Jews : as it was of old cared 
for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a 
crumb at least from her conspicuous table here in Romsy 
should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing doge, 
under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the 
guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of ths 
besotted, blind, restive, and ready-to-perish Hebrews ! noet 
paternally brought — nay, (for He saith, 'Compel them w 
come in,') haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and agaitot 
their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. Wnst 
awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeahn 
conscience ! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt ,a 
occasion ; witness the abundance of conversions which did 
incontinently reward him : though not to my lord be altogether 
the glory," — Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.] 

Though what the Jews really said, on thus being driven to 
church, was rather to this effect : 

1. 

Fee, faw, fum ! bubble and squeak ! 
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. 
153 



154 Holy -Cross Day. 

Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, 
Stinking and savory, smug and gruff. 
Take the church-road, for the bells due chime 
Gives us the summons — 'tis sermon-time. 

II. 

Boh, here's Barnabas ! Job, that's you ? 
Up stumps Solomon — bustling too ? 
Shame, man ! greedy beyond your years 
To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears ? 
Fair play's a jewel ! leave friends in the lurch ? 
Stand on a line ere you start for the church. 

III. 

Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie, 
Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye, 
Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve, 
Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve. 
Hist ! square shoulders, settle your thumbs 
And buzz for the bishop — here he comes. 

IV. 

Bow, wow, wow — a bone for the dog ! 
I liken his Grace to an acorned hog. 



Holy -Cross Day. 155 

What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass, 
To help and handle my lord's hour-glass ! 
Didst ever behold so lithe a chine ? 
His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine. 

V. 

Aaron's asleep — shove hip to haunch, 

Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch ! 

Look at the purse with the tassel and knob, 

And the gown with the angel and thingumbob. 

What's he at, quotha ? reading his text ! 

Now you've his curtsey — and what comes next ? 

VI. 

See to our converts — you doomed black dozen — 
No stealing away — nor cog, nor cozen ! 
You five that were thieves, deserve it fairly ; 
You seven that were beggars, will live less sparely. 
You took your turn and dipped m the hat. 
Got fortune — and fortune gets you ; mind that ! 

VII. 

Give your first groan — compunction's at work ; 
And soft ! from a Jew you mount to a Turk. 



156 Holy -Cross Day. 

Lo, Micah, — the selfsame beard on chin 
He was four times already converted in ! 
Here's a knife, clip quick — it's a sign of grace 
Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face. 

VIII. 

Whom now is the bishop a-leering at ? 

I know a point where his text falls pat. 

I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now 

Went to my heart and made me vow 

I meddle no more with the worst of trades — 

Let somebody else pay his serenades. 



IX. 

Groan all together now, whee — hee — hee ! 
It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me ! 
It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed, 
Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the 

waist ; 
Jew-brutes, with sweat and blood well spent 
To usher in worthily Christian Lent. 



Holy -Cross Day. 157 

X. 

It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, 

Yelled, pricked us out to this church like hounds. 

It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed 

Which gutted my purse, would throttle my creed. 

And it overflows, when, to even the odd. 

Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God. 

XI. 

But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock, 
And the rest sit silent and count the clock. 
Since forced to muse the appointed time 
On these precious facts and truths sublime, — 
Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, 
In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death. 

XII. 

For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, 

Called sons and sons' sons to his side. 

And spoke, " This world has been harsh and strange, 

Something is wrong, there needeth a change. 

But what, or where ? at the last, or first ? 

In one point only we sinned, at worst. 



158 Holy 'Cross Day. 

XIII. 

" The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, 
And again in his border see Israel set. 
When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 
The stranger-seed shall be joined to them : 
To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave. 
So the Prophet saith and his sons believe. 

XIV. 

" Ay, the children of the chosen race 
Shall carry and bring them to their place : 
In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, 
Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, 
When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er 
The oppressor triumph for evermore ? 

XV. 

" God spoke, and gave us the word to keep : 
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep 
'Mid a faithless world, — at watch and ward, 
Till the Christ at the end relieve our guard. 
By his servant Moses the watch was set : 
Though near upon cock-crow — we keep it yet. 



Holy -Cross Day. 159 

XVI. 

"Thou ! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came, 

By the starlight naming a dubious Name ! 

And if we were too heavy with sleep — too rash 

With fear — O Thou, if that martyr-gash 

Fell on thee coming to take thine own, 

And we gave the Cross, when we owed the 

Throne — 

♦ 

XVII. 

" Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. 
But, the judgment over, join sides with us ! 
Thine too is the cause ! and not more thine 
Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, 
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed. 
Who maintain thee in word, and defy thee in deed! 

XVIII. 

" We withstood Christ then ? be mindful how 
At least we withstand Barabbas now ! 
Was our outrage sore ? but the worst we spared, 
To have called these — Christians, — had we 
dared ! 



i6o Holy -Cross Day. 

Let defiance of them, pay mistrust of thee, 
And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 

XIX. 

" By the torture, prolonged from age to age, 
By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 
By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, 
By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, 
By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, 
And the summons to Christian fellowship, 

XX. 

" We boast our proofs, that at least the Jew 
Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. 
Thy face took never so deep a shade 
But we fought them in it, God our aid 
A trophy to bear, as we march, a band 
South, east, and on the Pleasant Land ! " 

[ The present Pope abolished this bad business of the 
sermon. — R. B.] 



SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER. 

I. 
Gr-r-r — there go, my heart's abhorrence ! 

Water your damned flower-pots, do ! 
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, 

God's blood, would not mine kill you ! 
What ? your myrtle-bush wants trimming ? 

Oh, that rose has prior claims — 
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming ? 

Hell dry you up with its flames ! 

II. 
At the meal we sit together : 

Salve tibi ! I must hear 
Wise talk of the kind of weather, 

Sort of season, time of year : 
Not a plenteotis cork-crop : scarcely 

Dare we hope oak-galls^ I doubt : 

Whafs the Latin nanie for ^''parsley " ? 

What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout ? 
II i6i 



1 62 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. 

III. 

Whew ! We'll have our platter burnished, 

Laid with care on our own shelf ! 
With a fire- new spoon we're furnished, 

And a goblet for ourself, 
Rinsed like something sacrificial 

Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps — 
Marked with L. for our initial ! 

(He, he ! There his lily snaps !) 

IV. 

Saintf forsooth ! While brown Dolores 

Squats outside the Convent bank, 
With Sanchicha, telling stories, 

Steeping tresses in the tank, 
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 

— Can't I see his dead eye glow 
Bright, as 'twere a Barbary corsair's ? 

(That is, if he'd let it show !) 

V. 

When he finishes reflection, 
Knife and fork he never lays 



Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 163 

Cross-wise, to my recollection, 

As do I, in Jesu's praise. 
I, the Trinity illustrate, 

Drinking watered orange-pulp — 
In three sips the Arian frustrate ; 

While he drains his at one gulp ! 

VI. 

Oh, those melons ! If he's able 

We're to have a feast ; so nice ! 
One goes to the Abbot's table. 

All of us get each a slice. 
How go on your flowers ? None double ? 

Not one fruit-sort can you spy ? 
Strange ! — And I, too, at such trouble, 

Keep 'em close-nipped on the sly ! 

VII. 

There's a great text In Galatians, 

Once you trip on it, entails 
Twenty-nine distinct damnations, 

One sure, if another fails. 
If I trip him just a-dying, 



164 Soliloquy of the Spa?iish Cloister. 

Sure of Heaven as sure can be, 
Spin him round and send him flying 
Off to Hell, a Manichee ? 

VIII. 

Or, my scrofulous French novel, 

On gray paper with blunt type ! 
Simply glance at it, you grovel 

Hand and foot in Belial's gripe : 
If I double down its pages 

At the woeful sixteenth print. 
When he gathers his greengages, 

Ope a sieve and slip it in't ? 

IX. 

Or, there's Satan ! — one might venture 

Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave 
Such a flaw in the indenture 

As he'd miss till, past retrieve, 
Blasted lay that rose-acacia 

We're so proud of ! Hy^ Zy, Hine. . 
'St, there's Vespers ! Fiesta gratia 

Ave Virgo ! Gr-r-r — you swine ! 



THE LABORATORY. 

[Anci'en J^egime.^ 
I. 
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, 
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely, 
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy — 
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee ? 

II. 

He is with her ; and they know that I know 
Where they are, what they do : they believe my 

tears flow 
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the 

drear 
Empty church, to pray God in, for them ! — 1 am 

here. 

HI. 

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, 
Pound at thy powder, — I am not in haste ! 
i6S 



1 66 The Laboratory. 

Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things, 
Than go where men wait me and dance at the 
King's. 

IV. 

That in the mortar — you call it a gum } 

Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come ! 

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue. 

Sure to taste sweetly, — is that poison too ? 

V. 

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures. 
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures ! 
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, 
A signet, a fan-mount, a filagree-basket ! 

VI. 

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give 

And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to 

live ! 
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head, 
And her breast, and her arms, and her hands, 

should drop dead ! 



The Laboratory. 167 

VII. 

Quick — is it finished ? The color's too grim ! 
Why not soft Hke the phial's, enticing and dim ? 
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir. 
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer ! 

VIII. 

What a drop ! She's not little, no minion like me — 
That's why she ensnared him : this never will free 
The soul from those strong, great eyes, — say, '^no !" 
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. 

IX. 

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought 
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought 
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would 

fall, 
Shrivelled ; she fell not ; yet this does it all ! 

X. 

Not that I bid you spare her the pain ! 
Let death be felt and the proof remain ; 



1 68 The Laboratory. 

Brand, burn up, bite into its grace — 
He is sure to remember her dying face ! 

XI. 

Is it done ? Take my mask off ! Nay, be not 

morose. 
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close : 
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee — 
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me ? 

XII. 

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, 
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you 

will ! 
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings 
Ere I know it — next moment I dance at the King s ! 



A FORGIVENESS. 

I am indeed the personage you know. 

As for my wife, — what happened long ago — 

You have a right to question me, as I 

Am bound to answer. 

" Son, a fit reply ! " 
The monk half spoke, half ground through his 

clenched teeth, 
At the confession-grate I knelt beneath. 

Thus then all happened, Father ! Power and place 

I had as still I have. I ran life's race, 

With the whole world to see, as only strains 

His strength some athlete whose prodigious gains 

Of good appall him : happy to excess, — 

Work freely done should balance happiness 

Fully enjoyed ; and, since beneath my roof 

Housed she who made home heaven, in heaven's 

behoof 

169 



lyo A Forgiveness. 

I went forth every day, and all day long 

Worked for the world. Look, how the laborer's song 

Cheers him ! Thus sang my soul, at each sharp 

throe 
Of laboring flesh and blood — *' She loves me so ! " 

One day, perhaps such song so knit the nerve 
That work grew play and vanished. " I deserve 
Haply my heaven an hour before the time ! " 
I laughed, as silverly the clockhouse-chime 
Surprised me passing through the postern-gate 
— Not the main entry where the menials wait 
And wonder why the world's affairs allow 
The master sudden leisure. That was how 
I took the private garden-way for once. 

Forth from the alcove, I saw start, ensconce 

Himself behind the porphyry vase, a man. 

My fancies in the natural order ran: 

" A spy, — perhaps a foe in ambuscade, — 

A thief, — more like, a sweetheart of some maid 

Who pitched on the alcove for tryst perhaps." 



A Forgiveness. 171 

" Stand there ! " I bid. 

Whereat my man but wraps 
His face the closelier with uplifted arm 
Whereon the cloak lies, strikes in blind alarm 
This and that pedestal as, — stretch and stoop, — 
Now in, now out of sight, he thrids the group 
Of statues, marble god and goddess ranged 
Each side the pathway, till the gate's exchanged 
For safety : one step thence, the street, you know ! 



Thus far I followed my gaze. Then, slow, 

Near on admiringly, I breathed again. 

And — back to that last fancy of the train — 

"A danger risked for hope of just a word 

With — which of all my nest may be the bird 

This poacher covets for her plumage, pray ? 

Carmen ? Juana ? Carmen seems too gay 

For such adventure, while Juana's grave 

— Would scorn the folly. I applaud the knave ! 

He had the eye, could single from my brood 

His proper fledgling ! " 



172 A Forgiveness. 

As I turned, there stood 
In face of me, my wife stone-still stone-white. 
Whether one bound had brought her, — at first sight 
Of what she judged the encounter, sure to be 
Next moment, of the venturous man and me, — 
Brought her to clutch and keep me from my prey, 
Whether impelled because her death no day 
Could come so absolutely opportune 
As now at joy's height, like a year in June 
Stayed at the fall of its first ripened rose ; 
Or whether hungry for my hate — who knows? — 
Eager to end an irksome lie, and taste 
Our tingling true relation, hate embraced 
By hate one naked moment : — anyhow 
There stone-still stone-white stood my wife, but now 
The woman who made heaven within my house. 
Ay, she who faced me was my very spouse 
As well as love — you are to recollect ! 

" Stay ! " she "said. " Keep at least one soul un- 

specked 
With crime, that's spotless hitherto — your own ! 



A Forgiveness. 173 

Kill me who court the blessing, who alone 

Was, am and shall be guilty, first to last ! 

The man lay helpless in the toils I cast 

About him, helplesS as the statue there 

Against that strangling bell-flower's bondage : tear 

Away and tread to dust the parasite, 

But do the passive marble no despite ! 

I love him as I hate you. Kill me ! Strike 

At one blow both infinitudes alike 

Out of existence — hate and love ! Whence love ? 

That's safe within my heart, nor will remove 

For any searching of your steel, I think. 

Whence hate ? The secret lay on lip, at brink 

Of speech, in one fierce tremble to escape, 

At every form wherein your love took shape, 

At each new provocation of your kiss. 

Kill me ! " 

We went in. 

Next day after this, 
I felt as if the speech might come. I spoke — 
Easily, after all. 



174 ^ Forgiveness. 

" The lifted cloak 
Was screen sufficient: I concern myself 
Hardly with laying hands on who for pelf — 
Whate'er the ignoble kind — may prowl and brave 
Cuffing and kicking proper to a knave 
Detected by my household's vigilance. 
Enough of such ! As for my love-romance — 
I, like our good Hidalgo, rub my eyes 
And wake and wonder how the film could rise 
Which changed for me a barber's basin straight 
Into — Mambrino's helm ? I hesitate 
Nowise to say — God's sacramental cup ! 
Why should I blame the brass which, burnished up. 
Will blaze, to all but me, as good as gold ? 
To me — a warning I was overbold 
In judging metals. The Hidalgo waked 
Only to die, if I remember, — staked ^ 

His life upon the basin's worth, and lost : 
While I confess torpidity at most 
In here and there a limb ; but, lame and halt, 
Still should I work on, sti^l repair my fault 
Ere I took rest in death, — no fear at all ! 



A Forgiveness. 175 

Now, work — no word before the curtain fall ! " 

The " curtain ? " That of death on life, I meant : 

My "word" permissible in death's event, 

Would be — truth, soul to soul ; for, otherwise, 

Day by day, three years long, there had to rise 

And, night by night, to fall upon our stage — 

Ours, doomed to public play by heritage — 

Another curtain, when the world, perforce 

Our critical assembly, in due course 

Came and went, witnessing, gave praise or blame 

To art-mimetic. It had spoiled the game 

If, suffered to set foot behind our scene, 

The world had witnessed how stage-king and 

queen. 
Gallant and lady, but a minute since 
Enarming each the other, would evince 
No sign of recognition as they took 
His way and her way to whatever nook 
Waited them in the darkness either side 
Of that bright stage where lately groom and bride 
Had fired the audience to a frenzy-fit 
Of sympathetic rapture — every whit 



176 A Forgiveness. 

Earned as the curtain fell on her and me, 
— Actors. Three whole years, nothing was to see 
But calm and concord : where a speech was due 
There came the speech ; when smiles were wanted 

too 
Smiles were as ready. In a place like mine. 
Where foreign and domestic cares combine, 
There's audience every day and all day long ; 
But finally the last of the whole throng 
Who linger lets one see his back. For her — 
Why, liberty and liking : I aver. 
Liking and liberty ! For me — I breathed, 
Let my face rest from every wrinkle wreathed 
Smile-like about the mouth, unlearned my task 
Of personation till next day bade mask. 
And quietly betook me from that world 
To the real world, not pageant : there unfurled 
In work, its wings, my soul, the fretted power. 
Three years I worked, each minute of each hour 
Not claimed by acting : — work I may dispense 
With talk about, since work in evidence, 
Perhaps in history ; who knows or cares ? 



A Forgiveness. 177 

After three years, this way, all unawares, 

Our acting ended. She and I, at close 

Of a loud night-feast, led, between two rows 

Of bending male and female loyalty, 

Our lord the king down staircase, while, held 

high 
At arm's length did the twisted tapers' flare 
Herald his passage from our palace where 
Such visiting left glory evermore. 
Again the ascent in public, till at door 
As we two stood by the saloon — now blank 
And disencumbered of its guests ■ — there sank 
A whisper in my ear, so low and yet 
So unmistakable ! 

*' I half forget 
The chamber you repair to, and I want 
Occasion for one short word — if you grant 
That grace — within a certain room you called 
Our ' Study,' for you wrote there while I scrawled 
Some paper full of faces for my sport. 
That room I can remember. Just one short 
Word with you there, for the remembrance' sake ! " 

J2 



1 78 A Forgiveness. 

Follow me thither !" I replied. 

We break 
The gloom a little, as with guiding lamp 
I lead the way, leave warmth and cheer, by damp 
Blind disused serpentining ways afar 
From where the habitable chambers are, — 
Ascend, descend stairs tunnelled through the 

stone, — 
Always in silence, — till I reach the lone 
Chamber sepulchred for my very own 
Out of the palace-quarry. When a boy. 
Here was my fortress, stronghold from annoy, 
Proof-positive of ownership; in youth 
I garnered up my gleanings here — uncouth 
But precious relics of vain hopes, vain fears ; 
Finally, this became in after years 
My closet of intrenchment to withstand 
Invasion of the foe on every hand — 
The multifarious herd in bower and hall, 
State-room, — rooms whatsoe'er the style, which 

call 



A Forgiveness. 179 

On masters to be mindful that, before 

Men, they must look like men and something more. 

Here, — when our lord the king's bestowment ceased 

To deck me on the day that, golden-fleeced, 

I touched ambition's height, — 'twas here, released 

From glory (always symbolled by a chain !) 

No sooner was I privileged to gain 

My secret domicile than glad I flung 

That last toy on the table — gazed where hung 

On hook my father's gift, the arquebuss — 

And asked myself " Shall I envisage thus 

The new prize and the old prize, when I reach 

Another year's experience ? — own that each 

Equalled advantage — sportsman's — statesman s 

tool ? 
That brought me down an eagle, this — a fool ! " 

Into which room on entry, I set down 
The lamp, and turning saw whose rustled gown 
Had told me my wife followed, pace for pace. 
Each of us looked the other in the face, 
She spoke. " Since I could die now . . ." 



i8o A Forgiveness, 

(To explain 
Why that first struck me, know — not once again 
Since the adventure at the porphyry's edge 
Three years before, which sundered Hke a wedge 
Her soul from mine, — though daily, smile to smile. 
We stood before the public, — all the while 
Not once had I distinguished, in that face 
I paid observance to, the faintest trace 
Of feature more than requisite for eyes 
To do their duty by and recognize : 
So did I force mine to obey my w^ill 
And pry no further. There exists such skill, — 
Those know who need it. What physician shrinks 
From needful contact with a corpse ? He drinks 
No plague so long as thirst for knowledge, — not 
An idler impulse, — prompts inquiry. What, 
And will you disbelieve in power to bid 
Our spirit back to bounds, as though we chid 
A child from scrutiny that's just and right 
In manhood ? Sense, not soul, accomplished sight, 
Reported daily she it was — not how 
Nor why a change had come to cheek and brow.) 



A Forgiveness. i8i 

" Since I could die now of the truth concealed, 
Yet dare not, must not die, — so seems revealed 
The Virgin's mind to me, — for death means 

peace. 
Wherein no lawful part have I, whose lease 
Of life and punishment the truth avowed 
May haply lengthen, — let me push the shroud 
Away, that steals to muffle ere is just 
My penance-fire in snow ! I dare — I must 
Live, by avowal of the truth — this truth — 
I loved you ! Thanks for the fresh serpent's tooth 
That, by a prompt new pang more exquisite 
Than all preceding torture, proves me right ! 
I loved you yet I lost you ! May I go, 
Burn to the ashes, now my shame you know ? " 

I think there never was such — how express ? — 
Horror coquetting with voluptuousness, 
As in those arms of Eastern workmanship — 
Yataghan, kandjar, things that rend and rip, 
Gash rough, slash smooth, help hate so many ways, 
Yet ever keep a beauty that betrays 



1 82 A Forgiveness. 

Love still at work with the artificer 

Throughout his quaint devising. Why prefer, 

Except for love's sake, that a blade should writhe 

And bicker like a flame ? — now play the scythe 

As if some broad neck tempted, — now contract 

And needle off into a fineness lacked 

For just that puncture which the heart demands ? 

Then, such adornment ! Wherefore need our hands 

Enclose not ivory alone, nor gold 

Roughened for use, but jewels ? Nay, behold ! 

Fancy my favorite — which I seem to grasp 

While I describe the luxury. No asp 

Is diapered more delicate round throat 

Than this below the handle ! These denote 

— These mazy lines meandering, to end 

Only in flesh they open — what intend 

They else but water-purlings — pale contrast 

With the life-crimson where they blend at last ? 

And mark the handle's dim pellucid green. 

Carved, the hard jadestone, as you pinch a bean, 

Into a sort of parrot-bird ! He pecks 

A grape-bunch ; his two eyes are ruby-specks 



A Forgiveness. 183 

Pure from the mine ; seen this way, — glassy blank, 
But turn them, — lo the inmost fire, that shrank 
From sparkling, sends a red dart right to aim ! 
Why did I choose such toys ? Perhaps the game 
Of peaceful men is warlike, just as men 
War-wearied get amusement from that pen 
And paper we grow sick of — statesfolk tired 
Of merely (when such measures are required) 
Dealing out doom to people by three words, 
A signature and seal : we play with swords 
Suggestive of quick process. That is how 
I came to like the toys described you now. 
Store of which glittered on the walls and strewed 
The table, even, while my wife pursued 
Her purpose to its ending. " Now you know 
This shame, my three years' torture, let me go, 
Burn to the very ashes ! You — I lost, 
Yet you — I loved ! " 

The thing I pity most 
In men is — action prompted by surprise 
Of anger : men ? nay, bulls — whose onset lies 



184 A Forgiveness, 

At instance of the firework and the goad ! 
Once the foe prostrate, — trampling once be- 
stowed, — 
Prompt follows placability, regret, 
Atonement. Trust me, blood-warmth never yet 
Betokened strong will ! As no leap of pulse 
Pricked me, that first time, so did none convulse 
My veins at this occasion for resolve. 
Had that devolved which did not then devolve 
Upon me, I had done — what now to do 
Was quietly apparent. 

" Tell me who 
The man was, crouching by the porphyry vase ! " 
" No, never ! All was folly in his case. 
All guilt in mine. I tempted, he complied." 

" And yet you loved me ?" 

** Loved you. Double-dyed 
In folly and in guilt, I thought you gave 
Your heart and soul away from me to slave 



A Forgiveness. 185 

At statecraft. Since my right in you seemed 

lost, 
I stung myself to teach you, to your cost, 
What you rejected could be prized beyond 
Life, heaven, by the first fool I threw a fond 
Look on, a fatal word to." 

" And you still 
Love me ? Do I conjecture well or ill ? " 

"Conjecture — well or ill ! I had three years 
To spend in learning you." 

" We both are peers 
In knowledge, therefore: since three years are spent 
Ere thus much of yourself / learn — who went 
Back to the house, that day, and brought my mind 
To bear upon your action, uncombined 
Motive from motive, till the dross, deprived 
Of every purer particle, survived 
At last in native simple hideousness, 
Utter contemptibility, nor less 



1 86 A Forgiveness. 

Nor more. Contemptibility — exempt 

How could I, from its proper due — contempt? 

I have too much despised you to divert 

My life from its set course by help or hurt 

Of your all-despicable life — perturb 

The calm I work in, by — men's mouth to curb, 

Which at such news were clamorous enough — 

Men's eyes to shut before my broidered stuff 

With the huge hole there, my emblazoned wall 

Blank where a scutcheon hung, — by, worse than all, 

Each day's procession, my paraded life 

Robbed and impoverished through the wanting wife 

— Now that my life (which means — my work) 

was grown 
Riches indeed ! Once, just this worth alone 
Seemed work to have, that profit gained thereby 
Of good and praise would — how rewardingly ! — 
Fall at your feet, — a crown I hoped to cast 
Before your love, my love should crown at last. 
No love remaining to cast crown before. 
My love stopped work now: but contempt the more 
Impelled m-e task as ever head and hand. 



A Forgiveness. 187 

Because the very fiends weave ropes of sand 

Rather tlian taste pure hell in idleness. 

Therefore I kept my memory down by stress 

Of daily work I had no mind to stay 

For the world's wonder at the wife away. 

Oh, it was easy all of it, believe, 

For I despised you ! But your words retrieve 

Importantly the past. No hate assumed 

The mask of love at any time ! There gloomed 

A moment when love took hate's semblance, urged 

By causes you declare ; but love's self purged 

Away a fancied wrong I did both loves 

— Yours and my own: by no hate's help, it proves, 

Purgation was attempted. Then, you rise 

High by hdw many a grade ! I did despise — 

I do but hate you. Let hate's punishment 

Replace contempt's! First step to which ascent — 

Write down your own words I re-utter you ! 

^ I loved my husband aiid I hated — who 

He was, I took up as my first chance, inere 

Mud ball to fling and ??take love foul with !' Here 

Lies paper ! " 



1 88 A Forgiveness. 

" Would my blood for ink suffice ! " 
*' It may • this minion from a land of spice, 
Silk, feather — every bird of jewelled breast — 
This poniard's beauty, ne'er so lightly prest 
Above your heart there . ." 

"Thus?" 

" It flows, I see. 
Dip there the point and write ! " 

" Dictate to me ! 
Nay, I remember." 

And she wrote the words. 
I read them. Then — '' Since love, in you, affords 
License for hate, in me, to quench (I say) 
Contempt — why, hate itself has passed away 
In vengeance — foreign to contempt. Depart 
Peacefully to that death which Eastern art 
Imbued this weapon with, if tales be true ! 
Love will succeed to hate. I pardon you — 
Dead in our chamber ! " 

True as truth the tale. 
She died ere morning ; then, I saw how pale 



A Forgiveness. 189 

Her cheek was ere it wore day's paint-disguise, 
And what a hollow darkened 'neath her eyes, 
Now that I used my own. She sleeps, as erst 
Beloved, in this your church : ay, yours ! 

Immersed 
In thought so deeply, Father ? Sad, perhaps ? 
For whose sake, hers or mine or his who wraps 
— Still plain I seem to see ! — about his head 
The idle cloak, — about his heart (instead 
Of cuirass) some fond hope he may elude 
My vengeance in the cloister's soHtude ? 
Hardly, I think ! As little helped his brow 
The cloak then, Father — as your grate helps now ! 



MEETING AT NIGHT. 

I. 

The gray sea and the long black land ; 
And the yellow half-moon large and low ; 
And the startled little waves that leap 
In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
As I gain the cove with pushing prow. 
And quench its speed in the slushy sand. 

II. 

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach ; 
Three fields to cross till a farm appears ; 
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
And blue spurt of a lighted match. 
And a voice less loud, thro' its joy and fears, 
Than the two hearts beating each to each ! 
190 



Parting at Morning, 191 

PARTING AT MORNING. 

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim — 
And straight was a path of gold for him, 
And the need of a world of men for me. 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND. 

That second time they hunted me 

From hill to plain, from shore to sea, 

And Austria, hounding far and wide 

Her blood-hounds thro' the country side, 

Breathed hot and instant on my trace, — 

I made six days a hiding-place 

Of that dry green old aqueduct 

Where I and Charles, wlien boys, have plucked 

The fire-flies from the roof above. 

Bright creeping thro' the moss they love. 

— How long it seems since Charles was lost ! 

Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 

The country in my very sight ; 

And when that peril ceased at night 

The sky broke out in red dismay 

With signal-fires ; well, there I lay 

Close covered o'er in my recess, 

Up to the neck in ferns and cress, 
192 



The Italiaji m England. 193 

Thinking on Metternich our friend, 
And Charles's miserable end, 
And much beside, two days ; the third. 
Hunger o'ercame me when I heard 
The peasants from the village go 
To work among the maize ; you know, 
With us, in Lombardy, they bring 
Provisions packed on mules, a string 
With little bells that cheer their task, 
And casks, and boughs on every cask 
To keep the sun's heat from the wine ; 
These I let pass in jingling line. 
And, close on them, dear noisy crew, 
The peasants from the village, too ; 
For at the very rear would troop 
Their wives and sisters in a group 
To help, I knew ; when these had passed, 
I threw my glove to strike the last, 
Taking the chance : she did not start, 
Much less cry out, but stooped apart 
One instant, rapidly glanced round. 
And saw me beckon from the ground : 
13 



194 T^^^ Italian in England. 

A wild bush grows and hides my crypt ; 
She picked my glove up while she stripped 
A branch off, then rejoined the rest 
With that ; my glove lay in her breast : 
Then I drew breath : they disappeared : 
It was for Italy I feared. 

An hour, and she returned alone 
Exactly where my glove was thrown. 
Meanwhile came many thoughts ; on me 
Rested the hopes of Italy ; 
I had devised a certain tale 
Which, when 'twas told her, could not fail 
Persuade the peasant of its truth ; 
I meant to call a freak of youth 
This hiding, and give hopes of pay, 
And no temptations to betray. 
But when I saw that woman's face, 
Its calm simplicity of grace, 
Our Italy's own attitude 
In which she walked thus far, and stood, 
Planting each naked foot so firm. 



The Italiafi in England. 195 

To crush the snake and spare the worm — 

At first sight of her eyes, I said, 

*' I am that man upon whose head 

They fix the price, because I hate 

The Austrians over us : the State 

Will give you gold — oh, gold so much, 

If you betray me to their clutch ! 

And be your death, for aught I know, 

If once they find you saved their foe. 

Now, you must bring me food and drink. 

And also paper, pen and ink, 

And carry safe what I shall write 

To Padua, which you'll reach at night 

Before the Duomo shuts ; go in, 

And wait till Tenebrse begin ; 

Walk to the Third Confessional, 

Between the pillar and the wall. 

And kneeling whisper whence comes peace? 

Say it a second time ; then cease ; 

And if the voice inside returns, 

Fro?n Christ mid Freedom ; what concerns 

The cause of Peace ? — for answer, slip 



196 The Italian in England. 

My letter where you placed your lip ; 
Then come back happy we have done 
Our mother service — I, the son, 
As you the daughter of our land ! " 

Three mornings more, she took her stand 
In the same place, with the same eyes : 
I was no surer of sun-rise 
Than of her coming : we conferred 
Of her own prospects, and I heard 
She had a lover — stout and tall. 
She said — then let her eyelids fall, 
" He could do much " — as if some doubt 
Entered her heart, — then, passing out ; 
" She could not speak for others — who 
Had other thoughts ; herself she knew : " 
And so she brought me drink and food. 
After four days,^the scouts pursued 
Another path : at last arrived 
The help my Paduan friends contrived 
To furnish me : she brought the news : 
For the first time I could not choose 



The Italia?i in England. 197 

But kiss her hand and lay my own 
Upon her head — " This faith was shown 
" To Italy, our mother ; — she 
Uses my hand and blesses thee ! " 
She followed down to the sea-shore ; 
I left and never saw her more. 

How very long since I have thought 
Concerning — much less wished for — aught 
Beside the good of Italy 
For which I live and mean to die ! 
I never was in love ; and since 
Charles proved false, nothing could convince 
My inmost heart I had a friend ; 
However, if I pleased to spend 
Real wishes on myself — say, Three — 
I know at least what one should be ; 
I would grasp Metternich until 
I felt his red wet throat distil 
In blood thro' these two hands : and next, 
— Nor much for that am I perplexed — 
Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, 



198 The Italiaii in England. 

Should die slow of a broken heart 
Under his new employers : last 

— Ah, there, what should I wish ? For fast 
Do I grow old and out of strength — 

If I resolved to seek at length 
My father's house again, how scared 
They all would look, and unprepared ! 
My brothers live in Austria's pay 

— Disowned me long ago, men say ; 
And all my early mates who used 
To praise me so — perhaps induced 
More than one early step of mine — 
Are turning wise ; while some opine 

" Freedom grows License," some suspect 
" Haste breeds Delay," and recollect 
They always said, such premature 
Beginnings never could endure ! 
So with a sullen "All's for best," 
The land seems settling to its rest. 
I think, then, I should wish to stand 
This evening in that dear, lost land, 
Over the sea the thousand miles, 



The Italian ift England. 

And know if yet that woman smiles 
With the cahn smile ; some little farm 
She lives in there, no doubt ; what harm 
If I sate on the door-side bench, 
And while her spindle made a trench 
Fantastically in the dust, 
Inquired of all her fortunes — just 
Her children's ages and their names, 
And what may be the husband's aims 
For each of them — I'd talk this out, 
And sit there, for an hour about, 
Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 
Mine on her head, and go my way. 



So much for idle wishing — how 

It steals the time ! To business now ! 



199 



UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY. 

{As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.) 
I. 

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and 
to spare, 

The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the 
city-square. 

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the win- 
dow there ! 

II. 

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at 

least ! 
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect 

feast ; 
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no 

more than a beast. 

200 



up at a Villa — Down in the City. 201 

III. 
Well now, look at our villa ! stuck like the horn of 

a bull 
Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's 

skull, 
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to 

pull! 
— I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's 

turned wool. 

IV. 

But the city, oh the city — the square with the 
houses ! Why ? 

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's some- 
thing to take the eye ! 

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry ! 

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, 
who hurries by : 

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when 
the sun gets high ; ' 

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted 
properly. 



202 Up at a Villa — Dowti in the City. 

V. 

What of a villa ? Though winter be over in March 

by rights, 
*Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered 

well off the heights : 
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the 

oxen steam and wheeze. 
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray 

olive trees. 



VI. 

Is it better in May, I ask you ? YouVe summer all 

at once ; 
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April 

suns ! 
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen 

three fingers well. 
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its 

great red bell, 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children 

to pick and sell. 



up at a Villa — Down in the City. 203 

VII. 

Is it ever hot in the square ? There's a fountain to 

spout and splash ! 
In the shade it sings and springs ; in the shine such 

foam-bows flash 
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and 

and paddle and pash 
Round the lady atop in the conch — fifty gazers do 

not abash, 
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her 

waist in a sort of sash I 



VIII. 

All the year round at the villa, nothing's to see 

though you linger, 
Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean 

lifted forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the 

corn and mingle, 
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem 

a-tingle. 



204 up ^^ ^ Villa — Down in the City. 

Late August or early September, the stunning cicala 

is shrill, 
And the bees keep up their tiresome whine round 

the resinous firs on the hill. 
Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of 

the fever and chill. 

IX. 

Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed 

church-bells begin : 
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence 

rattles in ; 
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never 

a pin. 
By and by there's the traveling doctor gives pills, 

lets blood, draws teeth ; 
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market 

beneath. 
At the post-office such a scene-picture — the new 

play piping hot ! 
And a notice how only this morning, three liberal 

thieves were shot. 



up at a Villa — Down in the City. 205 

Above it, behold the archbishop's most fatherly of 

rebukes, 
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some 

little new law of the Duke's ! 
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend 

Don So-and-so 
Who is Dante, Boccacio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and 

Cicero, 
" And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) " the 

skirts of St. Paul has reached. 
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more 

unctuous than ever he preached." 
Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession ! our 

lady borne smiling and smart 
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven 

swords stuck in her heart ! 
Bang^ whangs whangs goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle 

the fife ; 
No keeping one's haunches still : it's the greatest 

pleasure in life. 



2o6 up at a Villa — Down in the City. 

X. 

But bless you, it's dear — it's dear ! fowls, wine, at 

double the rate. 
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what 

oil pays passing the gate 
It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, 

not the city ! 
Beggars can scarcely be choosers — but still — ah, 

the pity, the pity ! 
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks 

with cowls and sandals, 
And the penitents dressed in white skirts, a-holding 

the yellow candles. 
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a 

cross with handles, 
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the 

better prevention of scandals. 
Bangy whangs whangs goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle 

the fife. 
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleas- 
ure in life ! 



THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY. 

[Fiano di Sorrento.'] 

Fortu, Fortu, my beloved one, 

Sit here by my side, 
On my knees put up both little feet ! 

I was sure, if I tried, 
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco : 

Now, open your eyes — 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish 

In black from the skies, 
With telling my memories over 

As you tell your beads ; 
All the memories plucked at Sorrento 

— The flowers, or the weeds. 

Time for rain ! for your long hot dry Autumn 

Had net-worked with brown 

The white skin of each grape on the bunches 

Marked like a quail's crown, 
207 



2o8 The EnglisJwiaii in Italy. 

Those creatures you make such account of, 
Whose heads, — specked with white 

Over brown like a great spider's back, 
As I told you last night, — 

Your mother bites off for her supper ; 
Red-ripe as could be. 



Pomegranates were chapping and splitting 

In halves on the tree : 
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, 

Or in the thick dust 
On the path, or straight out of the rock side, 

Wherever could thrust 
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower 

Its yellow face up. 
For the prize were great butterflies fighting, 

Some five for one cup. 
So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning. 

What change was in store, 
By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets 

Which woke me before 



The Englishman in Italy. 209 

I could open my shutter, made fast 

With a bough and a stone, 
And look thro' the twisted dead vine-twigs, 

Sole lattice that's known ! 
Quick and sharp ran the rings down the net-poles. 

While, busy beneath, 
Your priest and his brother tugged at them, 

The rain in their teeth : 
And out upon all the flat house-roofs 

Where split figs lay drying, 
The girls took the frails under cover : 

Nor use seemed in trying 
To get out the boats and go fishing. 

For, under the cliff, 
Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock. 

No seeing our skiff 
Arrive about noon from Amalfi, 

— Our fisher arrive. 

And pitch down his basket before us, 

All trembling alive 
With pink and gray jellies, your sea- fruit. 

— You touch the strange lumps, 
14 



2IO The Englishman in Italy. 

And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner 

Of horns and of humps. 
Which only the fisher looks grave at, 

While round him like imps 
Cling screaming the children as naked 

And brown as his shrimps ; 
Himself too as bare to the middle — 

— You see round his neck 
The string and its brass coin suspended. 

That saves him from wreck. 
But to-day not a boat reached Salerno, 

So back to a man 
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards 

Grape-harvest began : 
In the vat, half-way up in our house-side, 

Like blood the juice spins. 
While your brother all bare-legged is dancing 

Till breathless he grins 
Dead-beaten, in effort on effort 

To keep the grapes under, 
Since still when he seems all but master, 

In pours the fresh plunder 



The Englishfnan in Italy. 211 

From girls who keep coming and going 

With basket on shoulder, 
And eyes shut against the rain's driving, 

Your girls that are older, — 
For under the hedges of aloe, 

And where, on its bed 
Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple 

Lies pulpy and red, 
All the young ones are kneeling and filling 

Their laps with the snails 
Tempted out by this first rainy weather, — 

Your best of regales, 
As to-night will be proved to my sorrow. 

When, supping in state, 
We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen, 

Three over one plate) 
With lasagne so tempting to swallow 

In slippery ropes, 
And gourds fried in great purple slices, 

That color of popes. 
Meantime, see the grape-bunch theyVe brought 
you,— 



212 The Englishman in Italy. 

The rain-water slips 
O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe 

Which the wasp to your lips 
Still follows with fretful persistence — 

Nay, taste, while awake. 
This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball, 

That peels, flake by flake, 
Like an onion's, each smoother and whiter ; 

Next, sip this weak wine 
From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper, 

A leaf of the vine, — 
And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh 

That leaves thro' its juice 
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth 

. . Scirocco is loose ! 
Hark ! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives 

Which thick in one's track. 
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, 

Tho' not yet half black ! 
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder ! 

The medlars let fall 
Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees 



The Englishman in Italy. 213 

Snap off, figs and all, — 
For here comes the whole of the tempest ! 

No refuge, but creep 
Back again to my side and my shoulder, 

And listen or sleep. 

O how will your country show next week, 

When all the vine-boughs 
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture 

The mules and the cows ? 
Last eve, I rode over the mountains ; 

Your brother, my guide, 
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles 

That offered, each side, 
Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious, — 

Or strip from the sorbs 
A treasure, so rosy and wondrous 

Of hairy gold orbs ! 
But my mule picked his sure, sober path out, 

Just stopping to neigh 
When he recognized down in the valley 

His mates on their way 



214 Tf^^ Englishman in Italy. 

With the faggots, and barrels of water ; 

And soon we emerged 
From the plain, where the woods could scarce fol- 
low ; 

And still as we urged 
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us, 

As up still we trudged 
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant. 

And place was e'en grudged 
'Mid the rock-chasms, and piles of loose stones 

(Like the loose broken teeth 
Of some monster, which climbed there to die 

From the ocean beneath) 
Place was grudged to the silver-gray fume-weed 

That clung to the path, 
And dark rosemary, ever a-dying, 

That, 'spite the wind's wrath, 
So loves the salt rock's face to seaward, — 

And lentisks as staunch 
To the stone where they root and bear berries, — 

And . . . what shows a branch 
Coral-colored, transparent, with circlets 



rhe EnglisJnnan t?i Italy. 215 

Of pale sea-green leaves — 
Over all trod my mule with the caution 

Of gleaners o'er sheaves, 
Still, foot after foot like a lady — 

So, round after round. 
He climbed to the top of Calvano, 

And God's own profound 
AVas above me, and round me the mountains, 

And under, the sea. 
And within me, my heart to bear witness 

What was and shall, be ! 
Oh heaven, and the terrible crystal ! 

No rampart excludes 
Your eye from the life to be lived 

In the blue solitudes ! 
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement ! 

Still moving with you — 
For, ever some new head and breast of them 

Thrusts into view 
To observe the intruder — you see it 

If quickly you turn 
And, before they escape you, surprise them — 



2i6 The EnglisJwian in Italy. 

They grudge you should learn 
How the soft plains they look on, lean over, 

And love (they pretend) 
— Cower beneath them ; the flat sea-pine crouches, 

The wild fruit-trees bend, 
E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut — 

All is silent and grave — 
'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty — 

How fair, but a slave ! 
So, I turned to the sea, — and there slumbered 

As greenly as ever 
Those isles of the siren, your Galli ; 

No ages can sever 
The Three, nor enable their sister 

To join them, — half way 
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses — 

No farther to-day ; 
Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave. 

Watches breast-high and steady 
From under the rock, her bold sister 

Swum half-way already. 
FortU, shall we sail there together 



The Efiglis/wian in Italy. 217 

And see from the sides 
Quite new rocks show their faces — new haunts 

Where the siren abides ? 
Shall we sail round and round them, close over 

The rocks, tho' unseen, 
That ruffle the gray glassy water 

To glorious green ? 
Then scramble from splinter to splinter 

Reach land and explore, 
On the largest, the strange square black turret 

With never a door, 
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards ; 

Then, stand there and hear 
The birds' quiet singing, that tells us 

What life is, so clear ! 
The secret they sang to Ulysses, 

When, ages ago. 
He heard and he knew this life's secret, 

I hear and I know ! 

Ah, see ! The sun breaks o'er Calvano — 
He strikes the great gloom 



2i8 The Englishman i?i Italy. 

And flutters it o'er the mount's summit 

In airy gold fume ! 
All is over ! Look out, see the gypsy, 

Our tinker and smith. 
Has arrived, set up bellows and forge. 

And down-squatted forthwith 
To his hammering, under the wall there ; 

One eye keeps aloof 
The urchins that itch to be putting 

His jews'-harps to proof, 
While the other, thro' locks of curled wire, 

Is watching how sleek 
Shines the hog, come to share in the windfalls 

— An abbot's own cheek ! 
All is over ! Wake up and come out now, 

And down let us go. 
And see the fine things got in order 

At Church for the show 
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening ; 

To-morrow's the Feast 
Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means 

Of Virgins the least — 



The Englishman in Italy. 219 

As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse 

Which (all nature, no art) 
The Dominican brother, these three weeks, 

Was getting by heart. 
Not a post nor a pillar but's dizened 

With red and blue papers ; 
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar 

A-blaze with long tapers ; 
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold 

Rigged glorious to hold 
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers, 

And trumpeters bold, 
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, 

Who, when the priest's hoarse. 
Will strike us up something that's brisk 

For the feast's second course. 
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image 

Be carried in pomp 
Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession 

The priests mean to stomp. 
And all round the glad church lie old bottles 

With gunpowder stopped, 



2 20 The Englishman in Italy. 

Which will be, when the Image re-enters, 

Religiously popped. 
And at night from the crest of Calvano 

Great bonfires will hang, 
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, 

And more poppers bang ! 
At all events, come — to the garden, 

As far as the wall 
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster 

Till out there shall fall 
A scorpion with wide angry nippers ! 

..." Such trifles " — you say ? 
Fortii, in my England at home, 

Men meet gravely to-day 
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws 

Is righteous and wise 
— If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish 

In black from the skies ! 



HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD. 

I. 

Oh, to be in England 

Now that April's there, 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf 

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf. 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 

In England — now 1 

II. 
And after April, when May follows. 
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows — 
Hark ! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 
That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice 
over, 

221 



222 Home Thoughts from Abroad. 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture ! 
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 
The buttercups, the little children's dower, 
— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower ! 



THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL: 

A Picture at Fano. 

I. 
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave 

That child, when thou hast done with him, for me ! 
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve 

Shall find performed thy special ministry 
And time come for departure, thou, suspending 
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending, 
Another-still, to quiet and retrieve. 

II. 
Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more, 

From where thou standest now, to where I gaze. 
And suddenly my head be covered o'er 

With those wings, white above the child who prays 
Now on that tomb — and I shall feel thee guarding 

Me, out of all the world ; for me, discarding 
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door \ 
223 



224 "^^^^ Guardian- Angel. 

III. 
I would not look up thither past thy head 

Because the door opes, like that child, I know, 
For I should have thy gracious face instead, 

Thou bird of God ! And wilt thou bend me low 
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, 
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether 

Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread ? 

IV. 

If this was ever granted, I would rest 

My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands 
Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast. 

Pressing the brain, which too much thought ex- 
pands. 
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing 
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, 

And all lay quiet, happy and supprest. 

V. 

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired ! 
I think how I should view the earth and skies 



The Guardian-Angel. 225 

And sea, when once again my brow was bared 

After thy healing, with such different eyes. 
O, world, as God has made it ! all is beauty : 
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. 
What further may be sought for or declared ? 

VI. 

Guercino drew this angel I saw teach 

(Alfred, dear friend) — that little child to pray, 
Holding the little hands up, each to each 

Pressed gently, — with his own head turned away 
Over the earth where so much lay before him 
Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him. 

And he was left at Fano by the beach. 

VII. 

We were at Fano, and three times we went 
To sit and see him in his chapel there, 

And drink his beauty to our soul's content 
— My angel with me too : and since I care 

For dear Guercino's fame, (to which in power 

And glory comes this picture for a dower, ^ 
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent) 
15 



226 The Guardian- Angel. 



VIII. 

And since he did not work so earnestly 

At all times, and has else endured some wrong, — 

I took one thought his picture struck from me. 
And spread it out, translating it to song. 

My Love is here. Where are you, dear old friend ? 

How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end ? 
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea. 



SONG. 



Nay but you, who do not love her, 

Is she not pure gold, my mistress ? 
Holds earth aught — speak truth — above her ? 

Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, 
And this last fairest tress of all, 
So fair, see, ere I let it fall ! 

II. 

Because, you spend your lives in praising ; 

To praise, you search the wide -world over ; 
So, why not witness, calmly gazing, 

If earth holds aught — speak truth — above her ? 
Above this tress, and this I touch 
But cannot praise, I love so much ! 
227 



EVELYN HOPE. 

I. 
Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die too, in the glass. 

Little has yet been changed, I think — 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 

II. 
Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name — 
It was not her time to love : beside. 

Her life had many a hope and aim, 
Duties enough and little cares. 

And now was quiet, and now astir — 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares. 

And the sweet little brow is all of her. 
228 



Evelyn Hope. 229 

III. 
Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope ? 

What, -your soul was pure and true. 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 
And just because I was thrice as old, 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
Each was nought to each, must I be told ? 

We were fellow mortals, nought beside ? 

IV. 

No, indeed ! for God above 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love, — 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few — 
Much is to learn and much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 

V. 

But the time will come, — at last it will. 

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say. 



230 Evelyn Hope. 

In the lower earth, in the years long still, 
That body and soul so pure and gay ? 

Why your hair was amber, I shall divine — 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 

And what you would do with me, in fine. 
In the new life come in the old one's stead. 

VI. 

I have lived, I shall say, so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gained me the gains of various men, 

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope. 

Either I missed or itself missed me — 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 

What is the issue ? let us see ! 

VII. 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ; 

My heart seemed full as it could hold — 
There was space and to spare for the frank young 
smile 
And the red young mouth and the hairs' young 
gold. 



Evely?i Hope. 231 

So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep — 
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold band. 

There, that is our secret ! go to sleep ; 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 



ABT VOGLER. 

{After he has been extemporizing upon the instrument of his 
invention. ) 

I. 
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music 
I build, 
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their 
work, 
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as 
when Solomon willed 
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that 
lurk, 
Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim, 
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell- 
deep removed, — 
Should rush into sight at once as he named the 
ineffable Name, 
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the 

princess he loved ! 

232 



Abt Vogler, 233 

II. 
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building 
of mine, 
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and impor- 
tuned to raise ! 
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart 
now and now combine, 
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master 
his praise ! 
And one would bury his brow with a wild plunge 
down to hell. 
Burrow a while and build, broad on the roots of 
things, 
Then up again swim into sight, having based me 
my palace well. 
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether 
springs. 

III. 
And another would mount and march, like the ex- 
cellent minion he was. 
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with 
many a crest, 



2 34 ^^^ Vogler. 

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as 
glass, 
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the 
rest : 
For higher still and higher, as a runner tips with 
fire 
When a great illumination surprises a festal night — 
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space 
to spire, 
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of 
my soul was in sight. 

IV. 

In sight ? Not half ! for it seemed, it was certain, to 
match man's birth, 
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I ; 
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort 
to reach the earth, 
As the earth had done her best, in my passion^ to 
scale the sky : 
Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar, and 
dwelt with mine, 



Abt Vozler. 



235 



Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wan- 
dering star ; 
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze : and they did not pale 
nor pine, 
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no 
more near nor far. 



Nay, more ; for there wanted not who walked in the 
glare and glow, 
Presences plain in the place ; or, fresh from the 
Protoplast, 
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind 
should blow. 
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their 
liking at last ; 
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed 
through the body and gone, 
But were back once more to breathe in an old 
world worth their new : 



236 Abt V Oiler. 

What never had been, was now ; what was, as it 

shall be anon ; 
And what is, — shall I say, matched both ? for I 

was made perfect too. 

VI. 

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a 
wish of my soul. 
All through my soul that praised as its wish 
flowed visibly forth. 
All through music and me ! For think, had I 
painted the whole. 
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process 
so wonder-worth : 
Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect 
proceeds from cause. 
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the 
tale is told ; 
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to 
laws, 
Painter and poet are proud in the artYst-list en- 
rolled: — 



Abt Vogler. 237 

VII. 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will 
that can, 
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, 
lo, they are ! 
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 
to man, 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
sound, but a star. 
Consider it well : each tone of our scale in itself is 
naught ; 
It is everywhere in the world, — loud, soft, and 
all is said : 
Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my 
thought; 
And, there ! Ye have heard and seen : consider 
and bow the head ! 

VIII. 

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared ; 
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that 
come too slow ; 



238 Abf Vogler. 

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that 
he feared, 
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing 
was to go. 
Never to be again ! But many more of the kind 
As good, nay, better perchance : is this your 
comfort to me ? 
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my 
mind 
To the same, same self, same love, same God : 
ay, what was, shall be. 



IX. 

Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable 
Name ? 
Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made 
with hands ! 
What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever 
the same ? 
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy 
power expands ? 



AM Vogler. 239 

There shall never be one lost good ! What was, 
shall live as before ; 
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying 
sound ; 
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so 
much good more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a 
perfect round. 



X. 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, 
shall exist ; 
Not its likeness, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, 
nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 
the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 
too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in 
the sky, 



24<^ ^^^ Vogler. 

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
bard ; 
Enough that He heard it once : we shall hear it 
by and by. 

XL 

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evi- 
dence 
For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered 
or agonized ? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing 
might issue thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony 
should be prized ? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to 
clear, 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 
and woe : 
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the 
ear ; 
The rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musi- 
cians know. 



Abt Vogler 241 

XII. 

Well, it is earth with me ; silence resumes her reign : 
I will be patient and proud and soberly acqui- 
esce — 
Give me the keys — I feel for the common chord 
again, 
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor, — 
yes, 
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien 
ground. 
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into 
the deep ; 
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting- 
place is found. 
The C Major of this life : so, now I will try to 
sleep. 



SAUL. 
I. 

Said Abner, " At last thou art come ! Ere I tell, 

ere thou speak, 
Kiss my cheek, wish me well ! " Then I wished it, 

and did kiss his cheek. 
And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy 

countenance sent. 
Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from 

his tent 
Thou return with the joyful assurance the King 

liveth yet, 
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the 

water be wet. 
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of 

three days, 

Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer 

or of praise, 

242 



Saul. 243 

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended 

their strife, 
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks 

back upon life. 



II. 

" Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved ! God's child, 

with his dew 
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still 

living and blue 
Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no 

wild heat 
Were now raging to torture the desert ! " 



in- 
Then I, as was meet, 
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on 

my feet. 
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent 
was unlooped ; 



244 Saul. 

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I 

stooped ; 
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all 

withered and gone, 
That extends to the second inclosure, I groped my 

way on 
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once 

more I prayed, 
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was 

not afraid. 
But spoke, " Here is David, thy servant ! " And no 

voice replied. 
At the first I saw nought but the blackness — but 

soon I descried 
A something more black than the blackness — the 

vast, the upright 
Main prop which sustains the pavilion : and slow 

into sight 
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of 

all ; — 
Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, — 

showed Saul. 



Saul. 245 

IV. 

He stood as erect as that tent-prop ; both arms 

stretched out wide 
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes 

to each side : 
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there, — as, 

caught in his pangs 
And waiting his change the king-serpent all heavily 

hangs. 
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance 

come 
With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear and 

stark, blind and dumb. 

v. 
Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we twine 

round its chords 
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — 

those sunbeams like swords ! 
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, 

one after one. 
So docile they come to the pen-door, till folding be 

done. 



246 Saul. 

They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, 

they have fed 
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the 

stream's bed ; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star 

follows star 
Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue and so 

far! 

VI. 

— Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland 

will each leave his mate 
To fly after the player ; then, what makes the 

crickets elate. 
Till for boldness they fight one another : and then, 

what has weight [house — 

To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand 
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and 

half mouse ! — 
God made all the creatures and gave them our love 

and our fear, 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one 

family here. 



Saul. 247 

VII, 

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their 

wine-song, when hand 
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 

and great hearts expand 
And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — 

And then, the last song 
When the dead man is praised on his journey — 

" Bear, bear him along 
With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! are 

balm-seeds not here 
To console us ? The land has none left, such as he 

on the bier. 
Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother ! " — 

And then, the glad chaunt 
Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, next, 

she whom we vaunt 
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And 

then, the great march 
Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress 

an arch 
Nought can break ; who shall harm them, our friends ? 



248 Saul. 

— Then, the chorus intoned 
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory en- 
throned . . . 
But I stopped here — for here in the darkness, Saul 
groaned. * 

VIII. 

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and 

listened apart ; 
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered, — 

and sparkles 'gan dart 
From the jewels that woke in his turban at once 

with a start — 
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous 

at heart. 
So the head — but the body still moved not, still 

hung there erect. 
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it 

unchecked, 
As I sang, — 

IX. 

" Oh, our manhood's prime vigor ! no spirit feels 
waste, 



Saul. 



249 



Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew 

unbraced. 
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock 

up to rock — 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, — 

the cool silver shock 
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, — the hunt of 

the bear. 
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in 

his lair. 
And the meal — the rich dates — yellowed over 

with gold dust divine, 
And the locust's-flesh steeped in the pitcher ; the 

full draught of wine. 
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bull- 
rushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly 

and well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to 

employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses, forever in 

joy? 



250 Saul. 

Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose 

sword thou didst guard 
When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for 

glorious reward ? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held 

up as men sung 
The low song of the nearly-departed, and heard her 

faint tongue 
Joining in while it could to the witness, " Let one 

more attest, 
I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and 

all was for best ..." 
Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph. 

not much, — but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the 

working whence grew 
Such result as from seething grape-bundles, the 

spirit strained true ! 
And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of 

wonder and hope, 
Present promise, and wealth of the future beyond 

the eye's scope, — 



Saul. 251 

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people is 

thine ; 
And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one 

head combine ! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and 

rage, like the throe 
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor, and lets 

the gold go : 
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame 

crowning it, — all 
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — 

King Saul ! " 

X. 

And lo, with that leap of my spirit, heart, hand, 

harp and voice, 
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding 

rejoice 
Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as when, 

dare I say. 
The Lord's army in rapture of service, strains 

through its array, 



252 SaiiL 

And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot — "Saul!" 

cried I, and stopped, 
And waited the thing that should follow. Then 

Saul, who hung propt 
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck 

by his name. 
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes 

right to the aim, 
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that 

held, (he alone, 
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on 

a broad bust of stone 
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — 

leaves grasp of the sheet ? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously 

dowm to his feet, 
And there fronts you, stark, black but alive yet, 

your mountain of old. 
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages 

untold — 
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each 

furrow and scar 



Said. 253 

Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — 

all hail, there they are ! 
Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold 

the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the 

green on its crest 
For their food in the ardors of summer ! One long 

shudder thrilled 
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and 

was stilled, 
At the King's self left standing before me, released 

and aware. 
What was gone, what remained ? all to traverse 

'twixt hope and despair — 
Death was past, life not come — so he waited. 

Awhile his right hand 
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forth- 
with to remand 
To their place what new objects should enter : 

'twas Saul as before. 
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was 

hurt any more 



254 Saul. 

Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch 

from the shore 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's slow 

decline 
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap 

and entwine 
Base with base to knit strength more intense : so, 

arm folded in arm 
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 

XI. 

What spell or what charm, 

(For awhile there was trouble with me) what next 
should I urge 

To sustain him where song had restored him? — 
Song filled to the verge 

His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that 
it yields 

Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty ! Be- 
yond, on what fields, 

Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten 
the eye 



Saul. 255 

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the 

cup they put by ? 
He saith, " It is good ; still he drinks not — he lets 

me praise life, 
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 

XII. 

Then fancies grew rife 
Which had come long ago on the pastures, when 

round me the sheep, 
Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow 

as in sleep. 
And I lay in my hollow, and mused on the world 

that might lie 
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt 

the hill and the sky : 
And I laughed — " Since my days are ordained to 

be passed with my flocks, 
Let me people at least with my fancies, the plains 

and the rocks. 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image 

the show 



2^6 Saul. 

Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly 

shall know ! 
Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the 

courage that gains, 
And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." 

And now these old trains 
Of vague thought came again ; I grew surer ; so 

once more the string 
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — 

XIII. 

*^ Yea, my king," 

I began — " thou dost well in rejecting mere com- 
forts that spring 

From the mere mortal life held in common by man 
and by brute : 

In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our 
soul it bears fruit. 

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how 
its stem trembled first 

Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler ; then 
safely outburst 



Saul, 257 

The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindedst 

when these too, in turn 
Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect ; 

yet more was to learn, 
Ev'n the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. 

Our dates shall we slight, 
When their juice brings a cure for all sorrows ? or 

care for the plight 
Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced 

them ? Not so ! stem and branch 
Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the 

palm-wine shall staunch 
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee 

such wine. 
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit 

be thine ! 
By the spirit, when age shall p'ercome thee, thou 

still shalt enjoy 
More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the 

life of a boy. 
Crush that life, and behold its wine running ! each 

deed thou hast done 

17 



258 Satd. 

Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; until e'en 

as the sun 
Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil 

him, though tempests efface. 
Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must 

everywhere trace 
The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each 

ray of thy will. 
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, 

shall thrill 
Thy whole people the countless, with ardor, till 

they too give forth 
A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the south 

and the north 
With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Ca- 
rouse in the past. 
But the license of age has its limit ; thou diest at 

last. 
As the lion when age dims his eye-ball, the rose at 

her height, 
So with man — so his power and his beauty forever 

take flight. 



Saul. 259 

No ! again a long draught of my soul-wine ! look 

forth o'er the years — 
Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; be- 
gin with the seer's ! 
Is Saul dead ? in the depth of the vale make his 

tomb — bid arise 
A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till 

built to the skies. 
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers — 

whose fame would ye know ? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the 

record shall go 
In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was 

Saul, so he did ; 
With the sages directing the work, by the populace 

chid, — 
For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there ! 

Which fault to amend, 
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon 

they shall spend 
(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, 

and record 



26o Saul. 

With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the 

statesman's great word 
Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The 

river's a-wave 
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when 

prophet winds rave : 
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and 

their part 
In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God 

that thou art." 

XIV. 

And behold while I sang — But O Thou who didst 

grant me that day, 
And before it not seldom hast granted, thy help to 

essay 
Carry on and complete an adventure, — my Shield 

and my Sword 
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word 

was my word, — 
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human 

endeavor 



Saul. 261 

And scaling the highest man's thought could, gazed 

hopeless as ever 
On the new stretch of Heaven above me — till, 

Mighty to save, 
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance — 

God's throne from man's grave ! 
Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice to 

my heart, 
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels that 

night I took part. 
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with 

my sheep. 
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep! 
For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron 

upheaves 
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and 

Kidron retrieves 
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 

XV. 

I say then, — my song 
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever 
more strong 



262 Saul. 

Made a proffer of good to console him — he slowly 

resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The righ-t 

hand replumed 
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted 

the swathes 
Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his 

countenance bathes, 
He wipes off with the robe ; and he girds now his 

loins as of yore. 
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the 

clasp set before. 
He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had 

bent 
The broad brow from the daily communion ; and 

still, though much spent 
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, 

God did choose. 
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never 

quite lose. 
So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by 

the pile 



Saul. 263 

Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned 

there awhile, 
And so sat out my singing, — one arm round the 

tent-prop, to raise 
His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I 

touched on the praise 
I foresaw from all men in all times, to the man 

patient there, 
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then 

first I was 'ware 
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his 

vast knees 
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like 

oak-roots which please 
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up 

to know 
If the best I could do had brought solace : he spoke 

not, but slow 
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 

with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow ; 

thro' my hair 



264 Saul. 

The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back 

my head, with kind power — 
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a 

flower, 
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 

scrutinized mine — 
And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but where 

was the sign ? 
I yearned — " Could I help thee, my father, invent- 
ing a bliss, 
I would add to that life of the past, both the future 

and this. 
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages 

hence. 
As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's 

heart to dispense ! " 

XVI. 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no 
song more ! outbroke — 

xvii. 

" I have gone the whole round of Creation : I saw 
and I spoke ! 



Saul. 265 

I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received 
in my brain 

And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — 
returned him again 

His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw. 

I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love, 
yet all's law ! 

Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each 
faculty tasked 

To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dew- 
drop was asked. 

Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at wis- 
dom laid bare. 

Have I forethought ? how purblind, how blank, to 
the Infinite care ! 

Do I task any faculty highest, to image success ? 

I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and 
no less. 

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is 
seen God 

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 
the clod. 



266 Saul. 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever 

renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending 

upraises it too) 
The submission of Man's nothing-perfect to God's 

All-Complete, 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his 

feet ! 
Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity- 
known, 
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of 

my own. 
There's one faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to 

hoodwink, 
I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I 

think) 
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I 

worst 
E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold ! I could love 

if I durst ! 
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may 

o'ertake 



Saul. 267 

God's own speed in the one way of love : I abstain, 

for love's sake ! 
— What, my soul ? see thus far and no farther ? 

when doors great and small, 
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the 

hundredth appall ? 
In the least things, have faith, yet distrust in the 

greatest of all ? 
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate 

gift, 
That I doubt his own love can compete with it ? 

here, the parts shift ? 
Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, 

what Began ? — 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for 

this man. 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who 

yet alone can ? 
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, 

much less power. 
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvel- 
lous dower 



268 Saul. 

Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to make 

such a soul, 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering 

the whole ? 
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 

attest) 
These good things being given, to go on, and give 

one more, the best ? 
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain 

at the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, 

death's minute of night ? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the 

mistake, 
Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid 

him awake 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find 

himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 

harmony yet 
To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows ? 

— or endure ! 



Saul. 269 

The man taught enough of life's dream, of the rest 

to make sure. 
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified 

bliss, 
And the next world's reward and repose, by the 

struggle in this. 

XVIII. 

" I believe it ! 'tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who 

receive: 
In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to 

believe. 
All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as 

prompt to my prayer 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to 

the air. 
From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, 

thy dread Sabaoth : 
/ will ? — the mere atoms despise me ! and why am 

I loth 
To look that, even that in the face too ? why is it I 

dare 



270 Saul. 

Think but lightly of such impuissance ? what stops 

my despair ? 
This ; — 'tis not what man Does which exalts him, 

but what man Would do ! 
See the king — I would help him but cannot, the 

wishes fall through. 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor 

to enrich. 
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — 

knowing which, 
I know that my service is perfect. — Oh, speak 

through me now ! 
Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wilt Thou 

— so wilt Thou ! 
So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- 
most Crown — 
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 

down 
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no 

breath. 
Turn of eye, wave ot hand, that Salvation joins 

issue with death ! 



Smd. 271 

As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be 

proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of Being 

beloved ! 
He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest 

shall stand the most weak. 
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ! my 

flesh, that I seek 
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it 

shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee : a Man like 

to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever ! a Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See 

the Christ stand ! " 

XIX. 

I know not too well how I found my way home in 

the night. 
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and 

to right, 



272 Saul. 

Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive — 
the aware — 

I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strug- 
glingly there, 

As a runner beset by the populace famished for 
news — 

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, 
hell loosed with her crews ; 

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and 
tingled and shot 

Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge : but 
I fainted not. 

For the Hand still impelled me at once and sup- 
ported — suppressed 

All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and 
holy behest, 

Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth 
sank to rest. 

Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered 
from earth — 

Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's ten- 
der birth ; 



Saul. 273 

In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the 

hills ; 
In the shuddering forests' new awe ; in the sudden 

wind-thrills ; 
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with 

eye sidling still 
Tho' averted, in wonder and dread ; and the birds 

stiff and chill 
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made 

stupid with awe. 
E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — he felt the 

new Law. 
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned 

by the flowers ; 
The same worked in the heart of the cedar, and 

moved the vine-bowers. 
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, per- 
sistent and low, 
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — E'en 

so ! it is so. 



PROSPICE. 

Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am neaiing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe \ 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go. 
For the iourney is done and the summit attained. 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be 
gained. 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 

I should hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 

forbore. 

And bade me creep past. 
274 



Prospice. 275 

No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that 
rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a 

joy, 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest ! 



y 



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